Attorney Charged in Deadly Pedestrian Accident
Marcos Gonzaleaz-Balboa, a personal injury attorney in Miami Lakes, Florida, has been arrested for his role in the death of a woman from a hit-and-run drunk driving accident. He is facing felony charges in connection with the death of Tatum Holloway in December 2017, including tampering with evidence, DUI manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident and vehicular homicide. He’s also facing a civil lawsuit from Holloway’s family over the crash.
According to local law enforcement, the personal injury attorney spent around $350 on a minimum of 29 drinks in a bar before stumbling outside, getting into his car and driving away. Later on that same night, he lost control over his car as he was driving and hit Holloway as she was leaving from an event at the nearby restaurant where she worked. According to an affidavit from Detective Jeffrey Childers of the Miami-Dade Police, the crash impact was so strong that the victim was thrown upward and onto the windshield of the attorney’s car and then thrown around 51 feet from the accident impact site.
Surveillance footage obtained by police showed that before the accident, there was no damage on Gonzalez-Balboa’s car. After the night of the crash, the attorney’s windshield was shattered; he blamed the damage on a coconut. Gonzalez-Balboa had the windshield on his car replaced not long after the hit-and-run accident happened.
The legal representation for the family released a statement saying that Gonzalez-Balboa has had a serious alcohol problem for a length of time and that it finally resulted in the death of another person. According to the representative, the case is even more outrageous because he still fled despite being a lawyer and went out on the same day it happened and had his windshield replaced.
According to reports, the personal injury attorney plans to enter a not-guilty plea to the charges he is facing and is currently being held on a $150,000 bond in a Miami-Dade County Jail.
Drunk driving is an ongoing safety issue
Despite all the nationwide and local campaigns aimed at increasing awareness, there are still drunk driving crashes that result in serious injury or death all over the nation each year. According to Responsibility.org, despite a decrease since the 1980s in drunk-driving deaths, traffic fatalities related to drunk driving still accounted for 28 percent of all traffic deaths in 2016. That amounts to more than 10,000 deaths recorded that year alone that were caused by someone driving drunk.
Accidents involving a drunk driver and another driver are serious enough, but when a pedestrian is involved, the consequences can be even more dire. Pedestrians do not have the protection afforded by a vehicle, which is why pedestrian-vehicle accidents often have tragic results for the pedestrian.
A drunk driver can cause serious damage to other people and still walk away from an accident. If you’ve been injured by a drunk driver or were hurt in a pedestrian-auto accident, speak to an experienced attorney, like an auto accident lawyer Denver, CO trusts, about your case.
Thanks to our friends and contributors from The Law Office of Richard J. Banta, P.C. for their insight into pedestrian/auto accident cases.