A traveling nurse who slammed her Mercedes into a crowded South L.A. intersection at 131 miles per hour was convicted murder on Friday afternoon after jurors rejected an argument that she had a seizure behind the wheel.
Several gasps and sobs erupted from some of the victims’ relatives as the verdict was read. A number of Linton’s loved ones sat away from them in a separate row of benches. The jury only deliberated for about three hours.
Prosecutors say Linton, 41, was furious with co-workers and thinking about quitting her job as a traveling nurse at Kaiser Permanente hospital in West L.A. when she drove down La Brea Avenue. While approaching a busy intersection at Slauson Boulevard, prosecutors say Linton “floored” the gas pedal before smashing into multiple cars and causing a fiery crash.
The wreck killed six people: Nathesia Lewis, 42, Lynette Noble, 38, Asherey Ryan, 23, her 11-month-old son, Alonzo, and her boyfriend, Reynold Lester, 23. Ryan was more than eight months pregnant at the time, and Linton is also charged with killing her fetus.
The aftermath of the crash was nightmarish. The intersection was littered with burning car parts, streaks of blood stained the asphalt and black smoke filled the sky. The force of the collision ripped Ryan’s fetus from her womb and launched Alonzo’s car seat through the air, prosecutors have said.
Prosecutors argued Linton’s reckless driving was fueled by her refusal to address mental health issues. She had been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and was involved in several documented incidents of violence and erratic driving when she’d previously gone off her medication, according to Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Antonella Nistorescu.
In one alarming prior incident, Nistorescu said that Linton allegedly slapped a woman and drove through red lights at speeds of 100 miles per hour while un-medicated.
Linton had not taken her medication or slept for days before the crash, prosecutors said.
“The only person who could have prevented this is Nicole Linton,” Nistorescu said during her closing argument Thursday. “The only person who knew that when she got behind the wheel of her Mercedes that she was under the same stressors, exhibiting the same symptoms that had led her, before, to engage in violent aggressive actions that brought harm to others.”
Linton now faces multiple life sentences.
Linton’s defense team has argued that prosecutors were trying to put her in prison for a tragic accident. A neurologist and a psychiatrist who examined Linton weeks after the crash said she suffered a seizure in the moments leading up to the wreck and completely lost control of the vehicle. Defense attorney Jovan Blacknell also noted that prosecutors failed to call any medical experts to testify whether the crash could be linked to bi-polar disorder.
Throughout the trial, Blacknell acknowledged the horrible nature of the crash, but reminded jurors they can’t decide his client’s fate based on emotion.
“The results were catastrophic. The images are visceral. And the loss of life was horrendous,” he said. “But as much as I do want to acknowledge what occurred, and acknowledge the people who were injured, the people who died, those images don’t help you answer the question you are here to answer.”
Prosecutors have accused Linton of lying about suffering seizures. She has never been diagnosed with an underlying seizure disorder, such as epilepsy, and a medical test to provoke a seizure in Linton after the crash came back with no abnormal brain activity, prosecutors said.
During the test, Linton jerked and twitched in what prosecutors described as an attempt to fake a seizure.
Blacknell said no medical professionals have found that Linton was “malingering,” or attempting to feign a medical condition for gain.