Man gets 16 to 40 years for DUI crash that killed mother, grandmother

Angela Brown stood in a Las Vegas courtroom Thursday wearing her grandmother's pearl earrings and her mother's black high-heel shoes, facing the drunken driver who killed them and injured five others on Christmas Eve 2014.

"I'm just left with artifacts of who they were, and it hurts," she said of 81-year-old Etherine Noble, and her daughter, Essie Mae Hale, 63. "The pain is insurmountable, but I choose to focus on the good. I pray that a lesson has been learned, and you understand the effects it has on a family."

District Judge Kerry Earley sentenced Ray Diokno to 16 to 40 years in prison, saying she considered the circumstances of the crash.

Police said Diokno raced his silver 2002 BMW 330i about 100 mph against another vehicle west on Cheyenne Avenue at 11:30 p.m. Dec. 24, 2014. The other car went through a red light at the Hualapai Way intersection, and Diokno's sedan slammed into the passenger side of a blue 2011 GMC Terrain, driven by Cotina Porter-Smith, then 42. The SUV rolled and spun.

Hale and Noble, riding on the passenger side of the vehicle, were killed on impact. Porter-Smith, who suffered critical injuries, is still recovering at home in Abu Dhabi with her 1-year-old son, Taj Smith, who suffered only minor injuries, according to Brown.

Two passengers in Diokno's BMW, Jermayne Jefferson and Matthew Modelo, suffered serious injuries. Police said Diokno acknowledged drinking five shots of whiskey that night, and his blood alcohol content was 0.13 three hours after the crash. The legal limit in Nevada is 0.08.

"It's just not the drinking and driving, but what he was doing," the judge said. "That was most disconcerting ... You could have killed seven people, including yourself."

The judge also ordered Dikno pay more than $30,500 in restitution to the family of the victims.

Diokno pleaded guilty in August to two counts of DUI death and one count of DUI resulting in substantial bodily harm.

Shackled and wearing blue jail fatigues, Diokno apologized to the victims' family, said he expected no leniency, and asked Earley for "mercy on behalf of my family."

"There is no one to blame but myself," he said. "I will never understand why this happened, but the fact that it did is entirely my fault."

Brown said that since the crash her family has endured "mental and emotional stress ... not even one day at a time, but one breath at a time," although they harbored no anger toward Diokno.

"The backbone of our family was taken away, and we were left here to put together the remaining pieces, so we've decided to move forward," she said. "They wouldn't want us to dwell on the accident. ... Hate can't rise when you're thinking about the joy that you had with your loved ones."

The earrings and shoes helped Brown feel "empowered and safe, and that I was doing what they would've wanted," she said and called the judge's sentence "just and fair."

— Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker