Drunk driver's plea bargain carries three-year sentence in fatal crash

RANCHO CUCAMONGA -- A driver who killed 64-year-old Paul Martin in a June traffic collision has pleaded no contest to felony DUI as part of a plea bargain that carries a three-year prison sentence.

Albert Gilbert Ruiz, 23, is set to be sentenced Oct. 21 for the June 13 crash on Church Street in Rancho Cucamonga, in which witnesses said Ruiz drove over a landscaped median into opposing traffic and collided with the car driven by Martin.

Martin, a Rancho Cucamonga resident since 2001, was pronounced dead the night of the crash at San Antonio Community Hospital in Upland.

Ruiz, whose blood-alcohol level was measured at 0.16 -- twice the legal limit -- agreed to the plea bargain Sept. 20 in West Valley Superior Court. The conviction will count as a strike, according to minutes of the court hearing.

One of Martin's daughters called Ruiz's expected three-year sentence "an insult."

"He gets his life back in a few short years," Erika Giffing said. "We'll never have our father back. We'll never be the same.

Giffing said she believed that because Ruiz has no criminal history, the maximum sentence he could have faced was not much longer than three years.

"That's just our judicial system," she said. "I don't agree with it. But it is what it is."

Ruiz's prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Mary Izadi, could not be reached for comment.

Ruiz's attorney, Richard Escobedo, did not return calls seeking comment.

During an interview after the crash, Ruiz told a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy that before the collision, he drank about seven beers while watching a Lakers game at a friend's house.

Ruiz said his friends tried to keep him from driving because he was drunk, but he snuck away, according to a transcript of the interview attached to Ruiz's court file.

Giffing said she plans to read a three-page victim-impact statement during Ruiz's sentencing hearing.

She said she will describe "how hard it was to relay all this information to our children -- because he was such a good grandfather."

"Seeing my kids cry and my mom cry was the hardest thing I've had to do, and I'm a cancer patient," she said.

Giffing said her father didn't drink and drive, and he tried to keep family members and friends from doing so.

"Maybe someday I can find it in my heart to forgive (Ruiz)," she said. "I can't right now."