do it with your car<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\nThis week, Silva put it differently. The U-Haul driver who hit her husband, she said, \u201cgets this light sentence, and our whole family gets a life sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Killed while headed home from granddaughter<\/p>\n
Silva said that the court gave her and her husband\u2019s family an opportunity to recommend a type of community service for the driver. They ultimately settled on asking her to work with Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They asked the judge to make the driver speak publicly about dangerous driving, but she said he declined to make that specific demand. Court records show that the driver will work with MADD.<\/p>\n
Silva also said the driver was allowed to delay the start of her sentence \u2014 house arrest or ankle monitoring \u2014 until June. The records show that she is wrapping up a semester of classes for a chiropractic degree.<\/p>\n
The delay seemed to Silva like one more indignity in a terrible series of events that began with her husband\u2019s death in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just gotta hold on to the present,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd just hold on to family.\u201d<\/p>\n
To that end, she particularly relishes time with the granddaughter, Ofelia, who she said her husband, Jos\u00e9 Luis, was \u201cover the moon\u201d for.<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 Luis had gone to babysit Ofelia on the last day of his life, Aug. 25, 2024. Then he stopped at the Sunday farmer\u2019s market on his way home.<\/p>\n
Just before noon, he was headed east on J Street when the driver of the U-Haul truck entered the intersection headed north on 24th Street. Video shows that Jos\u00e9 Luis, a Marine veteran, was traveling on his motorcycle at a reasonable speed that the U-Haul driver did not come to a complete stop, according to the police report. Although Jos\u00e9 Luis was an experienced rider, investigators determined that based on the distance and the speeds, he could not have avoided the crash.<\/p>\n
Silva was shattered. She and Jos\u00e9 Luis had met later in life. Both of them were parents just shy of 50, and they\u2019d both been married and divorced twice. They had both dealt with life-threatening diseases: Michelle survived breast cancer; Jos\u00e9 Luis was on the verge of death before he stopped drinking and then in 2017, received a liver transplant.<\/p>\n
Each of them felt they had received a second chance at life \u2014 one that allowed them to find each other. Silva said they were \u201cinstantly best friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the part that I struggle with: I finally found my person,\u201d she said. \u201cNow what?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bee\u2019s Darrell Smith and Daniel Hunt contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A photo of Jos\u00e9 Luis Silva with his daughter Madeline Silva stands on display at his funeral Friday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[7,15857,115396,124796,124797,124795,121,123,122,21889,124798,7349],"class_list":["post-292960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-california","tag-car-crashes","tag-fatal-collisions","tag-jose-luis","tag-light-sentence","tag-michelle-silva","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-sentence","tag-the-driver","tag-vehicular-manslaughter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292960","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=292960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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