Woman Gets 15 Years in Drunk Driving Fatality

Noting that people who drink and drive “should listen to what is said in this courtroom and listen well,” a Van Nuys judge sentenced a former debutante Thursday to 15 years to life in prison for a fiery crash that killed a father of four.

After hearing tearful statements from the dead man’s family and Susan Conkey Rhea, the repeat drunk driver and admitted alcoholic who caused the fatal crash, Superior Court Judge Bert Glennon Jr. imposed the maximum sentence. Rhea will not become eligible for parole until she serves 12 years, Deputy Dist. Atty. Danette Meyers said.

The judge, prosecutor and defense attorney agreed that the case was one of the most tragic they had seen.

Rhea, a stockbroker from Sherman Oaks, had been out of a rehabilitation facility three days when she again drank and drove, speeding down Sherman Way with her headlights off shortly before midnight Jan. 30, 1995. Her vehicle was going about 80 mph when it slammed into the rear of a car driven by Jesus Berumen, 45, who was trapped and burned to death.

The case was delayed for more than a year as lawyers tried to resolve it with a plea bargain that would have paid Berumen’s widow and children $35,000 in restitution if prosecutors dropped the second-degree murder charge. But when the family learned of Rhea’s three prior drunk driving arrests, they rejected the deal.

The monetary offer troubled prosecutors in the Van Nuys office. Head deputy Phil Wynn said restitution offers are commonplace in other cases, but rare in those involving the loss of life.

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“The fact that she tried to put a price to my husband’s life just made it worse,” Berumen’s widow, Gloria, said in a statement read in court Thursday by her 17-year-old son, Jesus. “Not all the money in the world could replace him.”

Instead, the Reseda family has paid a price: The oldest son, Tomas, said in an interview outside the courtroom that he had hoped to study to be an architect. But he was forced to quit high school to work and help his mother support the family. He holds down two jobs.

Now, he says, it is his responsibility to make sure his younger brothers--Jesus, 17, and Uriel, 4-- receive an education, as their father had hoped.

Had the family accepted the plea bargain, Rhea could have spent little more than a year in prison, Meyers said.

Rhea has not accepted full responsibility for her crime or demonstrated any genuine remorse for what the Berumen family has suffered, Meyers said.

But Rhea, who declined to testify during her trial, told the judge that no matter what sentence he gave her, “the greatest punishment of all is living knowing I took a life and cannot replace that life.”

Sobbing, she continued, “I never intended for anything like this to happen. Indeed, in this case the wrong person died. It should have been me.”

Saying she wanted to tell the Berumens “the truth” about what happened that night, she denied testimony by paramedics and other witnesses that she had put on makeup and looked in a mirror while Jesus Berumen burned to death. She said she would have rushed to save him had she not become “incapacitated with shattered glass embedded in my eye, nose and chin.”

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She said she was unconscious before, during and after the accident, and didn’t know she had killed someone until she was booked at the Van Nuys jail. And she said she holds the rehabilitation center responsible for misdiagnosing her bipolar disorder and prescribing medication that diminished her ability to resist the temptation to drink.

After a drunk driving conviction, Rhea had been sober nine months when she became depressed and started drinking again in January 1995. She checked into a rehabilitation facility for two weeks, but checked out early Jan. 27.

The district attorney’s office in Van Nuys helped set up a bank account for donations to the Berumen family. So, far, about $12,000 in donations have been received, said Gloria Morin, the office’s victim-witness advocate.