{"id":177879,"date":"2026-02-14T11:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T11:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/177879\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T11:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T11:41:13","slug":"woman-accused-of-wiping-out-entire-family-in-san-francisco-crash-likely-wont-get-prison-time-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/177879\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman accused of wiping out entire family in San Francisco crash likely won’t get prison time"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Brief<\/p>\n

The woman accused of crashing into an entire family of four and killing them all appeared in court in San Francisco today.<\/p>\n

80-year-old Mary Fong Lau, who faces four felony counts of vehicular manslaughter has pleaded no contest.<\/p>\n

A Superior Court judge has indicated Lau will likely get probation and no prison time.<\/p>\n

SAN FRANCISCO – An 80-year-old woman accused of driving at a high rate of speed and crashing into a family of four, killing them, at a San Francisco bus stop nearly two years ago<\/a>, appeared in court on Friday. Mary Fong Lau had pleaded no contest to four felony counts of vehicular manslaughter in that crash.<\/p>\n

Prison time unlikely<\/p>\n

The Superior Court judge in that case indicated Lau will likely get probation and no prison time after factoring in her age, remorse, and lack of criminal history.<\/p>\n

The judge said she would likely serve two to three years probation and be banned from driving.<\/p>\n

James Quadra, the attorney of the victims’ relatives, said they were appalled at this development in the crash where a single family, including two children ages two and under, were killed.<\/p>\n

Quadra said, “a no-contest plea avoids the moral accountability that this case demands.”<\/p>\n

“What happened on March 16, 2024 was not a minor mistake. Ms. Lau drove at an extreme rate of speed through a residential neighborhood and wiped out an entire young family who were simply waiting for a bus.,” said Quadra. “Diego, Matilde, one-year-old Joaquim, and three-month-old Cau\u00ea are gone forever.”<\/p>\n

The attorney argued that if the defendant gets away with probation without prison time that it would send a concerning message to the public that an older driver can get away with killing a family in a car crash an simply get a “slap on the wrist.”<\/p>\n

“Age cannot become a shield against meaningful consequences when the conduct constitutes gross negligence and results in catastrophic loss,” Quadra said.<\/p>\n

Lau’s family had urged the court for home detention and meaningful community service.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper<\/p>\n

Last spring, Lau was accused in a civil lawsuit<\/a> of fraudulently transferring her interests in San Francisco real estate in an effort to evade financial responsibility to the relatives of the crash victims.<\/p>\n

The crash happened at a Muni bus stop on Ulloa Street and Lenox Way. Prosecutors say Lau’s SUV struck the bus stop after going more than 70 miles an hour.<\/p>\n

Lau was arrested at the scene for vehicular manslaughter, driving the wrong way, reckless driving and driving at an unsafe speed. She was hospitalized after the crash and quickly retained a lawyer.<\/p>\n

KTVU has reached out to the district attorney’s office for comment on this case but has not heard back as of this writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief The woman accused of crashing into an entire family of four and killing them all appeared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[84537,1431,8237,84535,84536,101,103,102,104,106,105,82498,7349],"class_list":{"0":"post-177879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-crash-victims","9":"tag-family","10":"tag-felony-counts","11":"tag-mary-fong-lau","12":"tag-mary-lau","13":"tag-san-francisco","14":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","15":"tag-san-francisco-news","16":"tag-sf","17":"tag-sf-headlines","18":"tag-sf-news","19":"tag-superior-court-judge","20":"tag-vehicular-manslaughter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}