More than seven years after a horrific DUI crash that killed a woman and injured four others, the driver was sentenced in a Joshua Tree courtroom Thursday (May 27). Jennifer Zapata, 29, of Utah, was sentenced to 16 years and eight months in prison by Judge Rodney Cortez. Zapata was driving drunk on April 13, 2014, when her car crossed the center line west of Arizona Avenue in Joshua Tree and collided head-on with an eastbound car, driven by Christopher Matthews, a Marine stationed at the Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. Killed in the collision was Matthews’ wife, Angela, 25. Christopher Matthews, his 1-year-old daughter, Zapata and her passenger, Evelyn Martinez, were all injured in the crash. Zapata accepted a plea bargain in February in which she pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and DUI causing bodily injury on a child less than 5 years old. Cortez sentenced Jennifer Zapata to 10 years for the gross vehicular manslaughter charge, eight months for DUI causing bodily injury, and a sentencing enhancement of six years for injuring a child under 5 years old. Zapata has a credit of 2,980 days, or about eight years and two months, for time served and good behavior.
