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After seeing that 3-month old Cau\u00ea Ramos Pinto de Oliveira would probably never recover\u00a0\u2014 he had suffered days of seizures, neurological damage and brain hemorrhaging\u00a0\u2014 his grandmothers made the decision to take him off life support, the family said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Investigators said Lau was not having a medical emergency when the crash occurred and found that her vehicle did not malfunction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During court hearings in February, Seth Morris\u00a0\u2014 Lau\u2019s attorney\u00a0\u2014 said his client expressed remorse \u201crepeatedly\u201d and sought psychiatric help in the aftermath. Chan\u2019s inclination to keep Lau out of prison reflected a \u201cmeasured and humane application of justice,\u201d Morris said last month.<\/p>\n
Several months after the crash, the victims\u2019 family members filed a wrongful death civil suit against Lau. Last May, they filed another civil lawsuit against her after their attorneys alleged Lau transferred her ownership interest in several properties to new limited liability companies and sold properties to third parties, including her son-in-law, in an effort to protect her assets in the event she loses the civil suits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Photos at a vigil Thursday outside the West Portal Branch Library memorialize parents and two children who were fatally struck by a speeding driver in 2024.<\/p>\n
Laura Morton\/For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
On Friday, Chan handed down virtually the same sentence he had noted in his indicated ruling, with the exception of adding 200 hours of community service. In the preamble to his ruling, he described in detail the reasoning behind his decision \u2014 a message intended for those who could not understand why such an extraordinary loss of life could result in such little tangible punishment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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In his explanation, Chan noted that because both sides agreed Lau had not been under the influence of drugs or alcohol, engaging in distracted driving or a sideshow or a speed contest, it was difficult to prove the woman had been grossly negligent. After that, he had to weigh whether incarceration would be anything other than pure\u00a0retribution given Lau\u2019s age, clean record and overall danger to the public.<\/p>\n
Even though the issue of why she had driven at nearly three times the speed limit \u2014 in a straight line for multiple blocks, with no effort to brake \u2014 was still unclear, it was not enough to change his mind. He had read the multitude of letters sent to him, reviewed the mountain of documents, and looked at every picture sent to him of the young children and their parents. Their deaths, he said, were the most egregious part of all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will never have a chance to build a life, their potential forever unfulfilled,\u201d Chan said.<\/p>\n
Tension and incredulity pulsed through Friday\u2019s sentencing hearing, which spanned more than two hours. The bulk of it included stirring victim statements from Denise Cardoso de Oliveira and Luis Ramos Pinto,\u00a0the sister of Diego and brother of Matilde. In their statements to the judge, they expressed shock and outrage at the outcome that had unfolded before them, including the fact that the judge did not sentence Lau to one year of home detention, against the recommendation of the adult probation department.<\/p>\n
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Luis Ramos Pinto, the brother of Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto, stands at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco on Friday, March 20, 2026.<\/p>\n
Benjamin Fanjoy\/For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
When the judge asked whether outfitting an \u201coctogenarian\u201d with an ankle monitor was appropriate in the case, a chorus of \u201cyes\u201d could be heard from the victims\u2019 side of the courtroom gallery. Rebuking their outward display of dissent, Chan said they could disagree with him but \u201cnot in that fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Four photos of the young boys were projected during Ramos Pinto\u2019s victim impact statement\u00a0\u2014 the first and last time any photos of their family would be displayed on the courtroom\u2019s screen. Ramos Pinto recounted the horror of Cau\u00ea Ramos Pinto de Oliveira\u2019s final few days. Cardoso de Oliveira spoke afterward, saying each criminal proceeding in her brother\u2019s case had left their family feeling invisible and \u201cdeeply disrespected.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would have wished for the defendant to see who she killed, because they were lives,\u201d she said. \u201cThey had dreams. What remains for us is a different kind of life sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two friends of the family spoke last, expressing their devastation at the \u201cerasure of an entire family\u201d and their burning need for Lau to apologize.<\/p>\n
In his final statements to the court, Morris said the \u201cmagnitude\u201d of the loss had indelibly affected Lau herself. A woman who had once been vibrant and an active part of her community had now become a shell of herself, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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A sign at a vigil Thursday for four family members killed in a 2024 crash stresses the goal of eliminating pedestrian fatalities in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
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Laura Morton\/For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
\u201cThe version of Mrs. Lau who sits before you today is a broken person,\u201d he said. The magnitude of the loss could simply not be mirrored by criminal law. He said he believed the sentence to be fair and just, despite how \u201cunpalatable\u201d such an outcome might have seemed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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As for the question of whether his client felt remorse, he said Lau felt it inwardly, and on every occasion of speaking to him had expressed a desire to trade places with the family.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The hearing was then bookended by an unexpected gesture from Lau herself: a brief apology, the first time she had ever spoken in her own words. Morris said she was compelled to address the family even though he had advised her that anything she said could be used against her in future proceedings. Getting up from her chair, the small woman with close-cropped hair turned her body to look over at the victims\u2019 families. The interaction took all of 10 seconds, maybe less.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to say sorry for your family,\u201d she said, in a quiet voice, as she bowed. She had a distressed expression on her face. \u201cSorry. Sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mary Fong Lau, sentenced to probation for a crash that killed a family of four,\u00a0walks out of court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3805,2356,2302,3071,3,5284,240412,21,19,22,20,25,78759,24],"class_list":["post-536024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-news","tag-san-francisco","tag-sf","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-and-world","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}