Man convicted of DUI fatal that killed boy in Costa Mesa
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A 64-year-old man was convicted Thursday of a drug-fueled collision that killed a 12-year-old boy crossing a Costa Mesa street on his bike.
Richard David Lavalle of Long Beach was convicted of second-degree murder in the Dec. 6, 2020 fatal collision with Noel Bascon at Junipero and Arlington drives.
Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Casey Cunningham told jurors in closing arguments that Lavalle failed a field sobriety test, showing them how he was unable to stand on one leg.
“He almost fell,” Cunningham said. “He is stumbling around.”
Police also saw he had “red eyes” and “blisters on the tongue,” which indicated drug usage and impairment to drive, Cunningham argued, adding that investigators initially thought he was high on marijuana but found that he had actually taken methamphetamine.
“He chose to consume methamphetamine prior to getting behind the wheel,” Cunningham said. “He well knew his act was dangerous to human life.”
Cunningham also pointed to the testimony of the boy’s father, Glen Bascon, who saw his son get run over.
Bascon testified that he and his son went out for a bike ride about 5 p.m. that day but he soon realized it was getting too dark, so he decided to return home.
Bascon said he was nearly across the street in the crosswalk when he saw Lavalle’s truck “coming fast.”
“I was screaming to make him stop,” the tearful Bascon testified.
After he “heard a loud bang,” he frantically looked around for Noel, but couldn’t see him.
Lavalle got out of the truck and apparently “didn’t realize what he hit. I said, ‘What the heck did you do? Why didn’t you stop?’” Bascon testified.
He looked underneath the truck and saw the bike scrunched under it, but his son was not there. “The truck swallowed the bike,” Bascon said.
Ultimately, he found his son and estimated that he may have been catapulted about 120 feet away.
Former Costa Mesa Police Department Officer Chasen Gaunt, who now works for the Manhattan Beach force, testified that he joined the nurse in attempts to revive the boy until paramedics arrived to take over.
When Bascon got to the hospital with his wife and daughter, they were told his son had died.
Cunningham said in court papers that investigators found drugs in Lavalle’s pickup. A blood-draw that night found the defendant had 115 nanograms of methamphetamine in his system.
Lavalle was convicted in 2013 of driving under the influence in San Diego County, triggering an upgraded charge from manslaughter to murder.
Lavalle’s attorney, Jennifer Ryan of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, said her client “felt awful” when the collision occurred. The defendant’s wife, who was in the passenger’s seat of the truck, told police the methamphetamine police found belonged to her, Ryan said.
Lavalle told officers that he had been working the whole day up on a ladder and had a bad back and hip to explain some of his difficulty standing on one leg and balancing as well as other field sobriety tests.
Another officer had the defendant do more field sobriety tests after he had been sitting “on a cold curb” for an hour, the defense attorney said, who maintained the child’s death was an accident, not a murder.
Lavalle, who is scheduled to be sentenced June 27, was convicted in August 2009 of armed bank robbery in federal court and sentenced in April 2010 to 35 months in federal prison, according to court records. He was returned to prison for another year when he violated terms of his supervised release in 2013. He was also convicted of robbery in Los Angeles County in June 2018, court records show.
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