Driver Pleads Guilty in Death of Nurse

An Arleta man pleaded guilty Friday to vehicular manslaughter and felony drunk driving in the 1986 traffic death of a 62-year-old Pacoima nurse. The plea came after a second-degree murder charge was dismissed.

Javier Bermea, 29, was charged after he drove his car head-on into the car of Carolyn Turner on Aug. 14, 1986, on Van Nuys Boulevard in Panorama City, authorities said.

The car driven by Bermea struck Turner’s car at high speed, authorities said. Bermea had been racing a motorcyclist, they said.

Van Nuys Superior Court Commissioner Sherman Juster on Friday found insufficient evidence of either excessive speed or a drag race.

At Bermea’s preliminary hearing last year, the prosecution’s main witness said he saw the car and the motorcycle travel only a short distance, Juster noted. The witness acknowledged that he could only speculate that Bermea had been driving his car 50 m.p.h. at the time of the accident, Juster said.

Faces 8-Year Sentence

Juster scheduled sentencing April 15 for Bermea, a supervisor at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys. He faces a maximum sentence of eight years in state prison. If convicted of second-degree murder, he would have faced a maximum term of 15 years to life.

In dismissing the murder charge against Bermea, Juster bemoaned the state law covering drunk drivers who kill.

Murder prosecutions of drunk drivers are based on a 1981 state Supreme Court decision. A second-degree murder charge is valid if a defendant knows his drunk driving could kill someone and drives anyway “with a conscious disregard for human life,” according to the decision. The concept is known as “implied malice.”

“The law is a shambles in that area,” Juster said.

In March, Van Nuys Municipal Judge James M. Coleman found sufficient evidence to order Bermea tried on the second-degree murder charge. But he expressed reservations, saying the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office was “over-filing” drunk-driving cases as murders.

0.24% Alcohol Level

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bradford E. Stone defended the second-degree murder charge against Bermea, who was convicted of drunk driving in 1985. Tests after the August, 1986, crash determined that Bermea had a blood-alcohol level of 0.24%, more than twice the California legal limit, Stone said.

But, Stone said: “This case falls into the gray area that reasonable minds can disagree upon.”

Bermea’s lawyer, Dennis E. Mulcahy, said he will seek probation for Bermea. Since recovering from the crash, Bermea has contributed nearly $11,000 to a restitution fund for the victim’s family, Mulcahy said.

Bermea was hospitalized for about two weeks after the crash with a concussion and leg injuries, the lawyer said.