LAPD sergeant’s daughter faces prison for trying to conceal fatal crash

A Los Angeles police sergeant’s daughter faces two years in prison for trying to cover up a fatal hit-and-run collision with a bicyclist in Gardena, officials said.

Vanessa Marie Yanez, 23, pleaded no contest Wednesday to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, as well as leaving the scene of an accident and perjury -- both of which are felonies, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

She is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 25 to two years in state prison, prosecutors said.

Yanez struck 60-year-old Jesse Dotson Jr. on June 26 last year as she was driving east on El Segundo Boulevard in Gardena and fled the scene, police said. The collision occurred a few blocks from Yanez’s home.

The next morning, she reported her vehicle stolen to the Huntington Park Police Department.

But a Huntington Park police officer saw news reports of the collision and alerted Gardena police to Yanez’s possible connection, officials said.

Dotson, a father and U.S. Postal Service worker, died of his injuries three days after the collision.

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