A Pico Rivera man who killed his friend and girlfriend in a 124-mile-per-hour crash in Ventura County has been sentenced to more than five years in prison, officials said this week. <\/p>\n
Leonardo Rodriguez, 21, was driving a black Honda Accord south on U.S. 101 near Thousand Oaks early on the morning of Oct. 31, 2024, when he tried to pass a car that was in the slow lane using the shoulder, the Ventura County district attorney\u2019s office said Friday in a statement. <\/p>\n
Reaching a top speed of 124 mph, Rodriguez crashed into a tractor-trailer parked in the shoulder, the office said. The impact threw his girlfriend, Serenity Rizkalla, and a friend, Michael Estrella, from the car. Both passengers were pronounced dead at the scene. <\/p>\n
Rodriguez and another friend who was in the car suffered minor injuries. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis tragedy was preventable, and (the victims\u2019) families will forever live with the consequences,\u201d Deputy Dist. Atty. George Brietigam said in a statement. \u201cWe hope today\u2019s sentence provides their loved ones with some measure of closure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodriguez pleaded guilty to two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter in June. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Pico Rivera man who killed his friend and girlfriend in a 124-mile-per-hour crash in Ventura County has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10479,7,9,8,283,350,1576,48397,172330,16612,346,172332,2901,172333,19426,3025,113373,172331],"class_list":["post-434068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-atty","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-car","tag-crash","tag-friend","tag-girlfriend","tag-leonardo-rodriguez","tag-measure","tag-office","tag-preventable-tragedy","tag-prison","tag-serenity-rizkalla","tag-shoulder","tag-statement","tag-ventura-county-district-attorney","tag-ventura-county-driver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434068","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=434068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}