The driver in the 2024 crash that killed a family of four in West Portal was sentenced to two years of probation Friday, enraging the victims’ relatives and supporters who had urged the court to reconsider.
Judge Bruce Chan also revoked Mary Fong Lau’s driver’s license for three years, including her probation period. At that point, she will be eligible to reapply to the DMV for another license.
Lau, 80, was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and six days of time served in jail and will not face further incarceration.
As the sentence was read aloud, more than 40 friends and family members of the victims looked on silently, save one, who exclaimed, “Jesus!”
Lau, wearing a red, leopard-patterned shirt, sat motionless, facing her lawyer, her face obscured by her interpreter.
Before Chan read the sentence, he said the legal standard of gross negligence had not been met, saying Lau wasn’t engaging in a race or sideshow, was not texting, and was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash.
Chan said incarceration would endanger Lau, given “documented” issues with providing healthcare and the risk she’d face of physical harm from inmates who “prey upon the weak.” He dismissed the possibility of home confinement, saying it would amount to “putting an ankle monitor on an octogenarian’s ankle.”
He said he intended to order Lau to pay $67,4oo in restitution as part of her sentence.
Chan indicated at a hearing last month that Lau would likely get no prison time after she pleaded no contest to four counts of felony vehicular manslaughter. Chan cited Lau’s age, remorse, and lack of a criminal record as reasons for a light sentence.
Family and friends of the couple whom Lau killed addressed Chan, urging him to invoke a harsher sentence with one year in county jail or home confinement with ankle monitoring for the same length of time, and to permanently bar her from driving again.
“We have not felt seen, we have not felt heard, and we feel disrespected,” Denise Oliveira, Diego’s sister, told Chan.
After hearing from family and friends, Lau stood and apologized to the victims’ loved ones at the urging of Fabio Benedetto, a friend of the couple.
“I’m sorry for your family. Sorry,” Lau said, turning toward them and bowing.
Lau never intends to drive again and never retrieved her SUV, which was totalled during the crash, according to her attorney Seth Morris.
“The accident is something she regrets deeply,” Morris told reporters outside the courtroom. “She has taken accountability by pleading no contest.”
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins rejected that characterization.
“From my office’s standpoint as well as the families’, that simply isn’t justice. That is not taking responsibility for your actions and the responsibility for the loss of four innocent and beautiful lives,” Jenkins said outside the courtroom after the sentencing was announced.
“This is a lesson to San Francisco that sadly, while we think we have a functioning justice system, so often each and every day we have judges who decide that they don’t want to trust the process in and of itself and they’d rather take justice into their own hands.”
Mary Fong Lau at the San Francisco County Superior Court in 2024. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard
Prosecutors say Lau was speeding in a 2014 Mercedes GLK when she drove onto a Ulloa Street sidewalk, striking the West Portal library branch building before hitting a married couple and their children on March 16, 2024. The victims were identified as Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto, and their sons, 1-year-old Joaquin Ramos Pinto de Oliveira and 3-month-old Cauê Ramos Pinto de Oliveira. They were waiting for a bus to take them to the San Francisco Zoo.
Pedestrian advocates Walk SF and the victims’ relatives organized a vigil Thursday evening outside the library, marking two years since the crash.
A vigil Thursday outside the West Portal branch library. | Source: Manuel Orbegozo for The Standard
“They lived every moment to the absolute fullest,” Anne Pozzi, 33, said Friday outside court. She became friends with the couple in 2019. “They made every moment feel special.”
The San Francisco Police Department found no mechanical issues with Lau’s vehicle and determined that she was not impaired at the time of the crash. She told a witness at the scene that she was trying to park her car when she accidentally moved her foot to the gas pedal.
The area around the bus stop is fenced off after Lau’s sport utility vehicle crashed. | Source: Benjamin Fanjoy/SF Chronicle/AP
Photos of the family are displayed during Thursday’s vigil. | Source: Manuel Orbegozo for The Standard
Lau initially pleaded not guilty to the charges. By changing her plea to no contest, she accepted a conviction without formally admitting guilt.
The victims’ relatives had asked that Chan reject the plea of no contest and require Lau to plead guilty. Jenkins and the victims’ family said home detention, mandated community service, and the permanent revocation of her driver’s license would be a more appropriate sentence than probation.
“Our loved ones were killed by Mrs. Lau in broad daylight, in a residential neighborhood while she was driving at an extreme speed. Since the crash, there has been no personal expression of remorse in open court and no direct acknowledgment of responsibility,” relatives wrote in an online petition (opens in new tab) asking the judge to reconsider the sentence. The petition has more than 12,000 signatures. “The Judge’s indicated sentence of probation alone risks sending a message that four lives can be taken without consequence.”
Last year, the family accused Lau of trying to hide millions of dollars worth of real estate to avoid paying damages in a wrongful death lawsuit. Morris has denied the claims, saying his client reorganized her property holdings because she was advised to do so and has since reversed the transactions.