SAN FRANCISCO, CA — A San Francisco judge’s hint at a lenient sentence for a driver convicted of killing a family of four while speeding down a residential street in 2024 has sparked outrage online, according to a report from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mary Fong Lau was driving at around 70 miles per hour when she crashed into Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, 40, his 1-year-old son, Joaquim Ramos Pinto de Oliveira, Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto, 38, and 3-month-old Cauê Ramos Pinto on March 16, 2024, according to the report.
On Friday, she changed her not guilty plea of four counts of vehicular manslaughter to no contest, ultimately convicting her in the deadly crash and allowing the court to treat them as if they were guilty, according to the report
The judge in the case has suggested sentencing Lau to home detention or community service instead of prison, according to the report.
“I can understand quite a degree of shock here,” Stanford professor Robert Weisberg, who specializes in criminal law, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Unless there are stringent conditions of probation, (the judge’s indicated ruling) is close to zero punishment.”