Navy petty officer scheduled to be sentenced for Coronado Bridge crash

SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – A Sentencing is scheduled Thursday for a Navy petty officer who was under the influence of alcohol when his pickup truck flew off a transition ramp to the San Diego-Coronado Bridge and crashed into a crowd in Chicano Park killing four people.

Navy Petty Officer Richard Sepolio has been sentenced to 9 years and 8 months after driving off Coronado bridge, killing 4 people.

27-year-old Richard Anthony Sepolio was convicted in February of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and DUI causing injury in connection with the October 15th, 2016 crash.

The crash killed 50-year-old Annamarie Contreras, 52-year-old Cruz Contreras, 49- year-old Andre Banks, 46-year-old Francine Jiminez and seriously injured seven others.

Sepolio was convicted of four counts of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and one count of DUI causing injury.

The same jury acquitted him of four counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, seven counts of reckless driving and one count of driving over the legal alcohol limit and causing injury.

Deputy District Attorney Cally Bright told jurors Sepolio chose “to drive irritated, impaired and impatient.” In addition to having drinks prior to getting behind the wheel, Sepolio was arguing with his girlfriend on the phone just moments before losing control of his truck on the bridge, the prosecutor said.

Sepolio testified he was driving on the transition ramp — a route back to Coronado that he had driven more than 90 times before — when he sped up to merge in front of another car and lost control.

The defendant said he remembered being on top of a freeway barrier looking down, then waking up in the park and being pulled out of his truck. Sepolio said his memory was mostly “cloudy” about what happened after his truck plunged into the crowd below.

On the stand, he denied arguing with his then-girlfriend on the phone just before the crash, but admitted on cross-examination that he’d just left a lunch with a female Navy colleague where “the idea was to go out and have a good time.” Sepolio testified he had a glass of alcoholic cider and a glass of wine at lunch before heading back to Coronado.

Whether Sepolio was intoxicated was a point of contention during the trial, particularly with one blood sample not tested for more than a year after the crash, according to his attorney.

While the jury did not find Sepolio guilty of the greatest charge he faced — gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated — jurors agreed that Sepolio was under the influence.

Bright said she believed Sepolio was grossly negligent due to driving while under the influence and distracted, but supported the jury’s findings, which included its rejection of the charge that Sepolio was intoxicated above the legal blood-alcohol limit.