Nearly seven years after a crash that killed a Twentynine Palms woman and seriously injured her husband and one-year-old daughter, Jennifer Zapata recently accepted a plea bargain for gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.
Zapata, now 29, of Utah, was driving a white Hyundai Sonata April 13, 2014 westbound on Highway 62, when the car drifted across the center line. Her car crashed head-on into an eastbound Mazda 6 near Arizona Avenue in Joshua Tree. Angela Matthews, 25, a passenger in the Mazda, died two days later at Desert Hospital in Palm Springs. Her husband, Chris Matthews, a Marine at the Twentynine Palms Marine base, and her daughter Dakota, were critically injured. Zapata and a passenger in her car, Evelyn Martinez, 20, also of Utah, were also injured in the crash.
Zapata has been held in the West Valley Detention Center since she was released from the hospital.
On February 24, Jennifer Zapata agreed to plead guilty to DUI causing bodily injury and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, with a sentencing enhancement of injury on a child less than 5 years old. In exchange for her guilty plea, seven other charges of DUI with sentencing enhancements for DUI causing brain damage, paralysis, or bodily injuries, were dismissed. Zapata will be sentenced April 30.
