Drunk Driver Who Killed Before Gets Six Months

Danny Ornelas, the Huntington Beach man who served two years in prison for killing a mother of three while driving drunk in 1988, was sentenced Wednesday to six months in the Orange County Jail for drag racing and driving under the influence again.

Ornelas, 26, was convicted last week of racing his sports car through a quiet Newport Beach neighborhood about 1:30 a.m. on Feb. 12, just blocks from where he had killed 37-year-old Debbie Killelea.

Due to a seven-year statute of limitations on drunk-driving offenses, Ornelas’ punishment could not be extended beyond that allowed for a single misdemeanor charge of drunk driving, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Elizabeth Mulfetta, who prosecuted Ornelas.

In addition to his stay in jail, Ornelas will be fined $2,826 and will have his driver’s license suspended for six months, Mulfetta said.

“I wish there was more we could do,” she said. “He has displayed no remorse at all for what he did in the past.”

Deputy Public Defender Jeannette Noceda, who defended Ornelas, could not be reached for comment.

Ornelas will serve less than four months of this sentence because he has been in jail for more than two months since his arrest, the district attorney’s office said.

According to the Newport Beach police officer who arrested him in February, Ornelas and his friends were “playing cat and mouse” with their sports cars at speeds of up to 60 mph in a 30-mph zone.

Results of a Breathalyzer test conducted that morning showed Ornelas’ blood-alcohol level was 0.13%, well over the legal limit of 0.08%.

News of his arrest awakened painful memories for friends and relatives of Killelea, who was thrown more than 60 feet by Ornelas’ car in front of two of her children.

After the 1988 accident, they saw the then-19-year-old Ornelas escape a prison sentence of up to 10 years when his conviction for grossly negligent vehicular manslaughter was overturned because of improper jury instructions.

During a second trial in 1991, he was convicted of a lesser charge of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and sentenced to two years in the county jail.

Because he already had been in jail for more than two years, Ornelas was set free.

Since his 1988 arrest, organizations lobbying against drunk driving have used Ornelas as an example of why tougher penalties are needed.

“We have to wake people up on the seriousness of DUI offenses,” said Bill Neessen, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Orange County.

“This was his second offense. It should have been a felony charge. There should be no statute of limitations for this crime.”

Killelea’s mother, Julia Kilfoy, said earlier this week that “no punishment would be enough for him. He killed a good mother and a great daughter. I will never get over it.”