OAKLAND — A Hayward man will serve one year in jail, in addition to nearly two he has already spent behind bars, after pleading no contest to gross vehicular manslaughter of a pedestrian, court records show.
Ivan Lopez-Garcia, 25, pleaded no contest last year to manslaughter in the death of 29-year-old Jim Carlos Sanchez. On Jan. 23, Judge Thomas Nixon sentenced Lopez-Garcia to a year in jail with no credit for time already served behind bars. Once released, he will be on probation for three years.
It was an open-ended plea deal, giving Judge Nixon a choice of anything from freeing Lopez-Garcia outright to imposing a 10-year prison term, according to a transcript of the change-of-plea hearing.
On Feb. 5, 2021, Sanchez was walking to his parked car when Lopez-Garcia’s vehicle struck him near the intersection of D and Valley streets in Hayward. Then his vehicle continued and got into a second collision, at D and Second streets, where Lopez-Garcia was arrested. Police said at the time both accidents were his fault.
At Lopez-Garica’s preliminary hearing last year, an officer testified there was an open tall can of Modelo Especial in the front seat cupholder of Lopez-Garcia’s vehicle. His attorney pointed out the officer arrived 10 minutes after the crash and argued Lopez-Garcia had plenty of time to crack open the beer and drink before police got there, accounting for his 0.19 blood alcohol content, which is more than twice the legal limit.
Prosecutors, though, argued that Lopez-Garcia’s bad driving was further evidence he was very drunk. They also pointed to the testimony of a witness who had witnessed Lopez-Garcia stumbling, beer in hand, at his Hayward home earlier in the evening.
“Normally, normal people don’t crash into individuals getting in their car legally parked on the roadway,” Deputy District Attorney Amanda Chavez said at the preliminary hearing.
Lopez-Garcia was released after the crash. He was re-arrested in April 2021 when charges were filed against him, and he has been in jail since then.
