The driver who crashed her SUV onto a West Portal sidewalk, killing a family of four, has been charged with four counts of felony vehicular manslaughter, officials announced Tuesday.
Mary Fong Lau, 79, was allegedly speeding eastbound on Ulloa Street on March 16 when she drove onto the sidewalk, striking the West Portal Branch library building and then the victims, who were waiting at the bus shelter at Lenox Way. The family, identified as Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto, and their two young sons, 1-year-old Joaquin Ramos Pinto de Oliveira and 3-month-old Cauê Ramos Pinto de Oliveira, were waiting for a bus to the San Francisco Zoo.
“These are felony vehicular manslaughter charges, which is the result of the gross negligence that occurred in causing this collision, from our point of view,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said during a news conference announcing the charges.
The crash sparked outrage over street safety at the intersection and the city’s overall failure to put a stop to traffic fatalities through the 2014 Vision Zero initiative.
Police arrested Lau on March 18 on suspicion of felony vehicular manslaughter, felony reckless driving causing bodily injury and additional traffic violations. But up until Tuesday, she had been out of custody because she had not been formally charged with a crime.
Police Chief Bill Scott said at the news conference that an arrest warrant had been issued for Lau and police were working with her attorney to bring her into custody. She was booked in county jail at 6:55 p.m., according to online inmate records.
“While this news is very difficult to take in, Ms. Lau appreciates that the District Attorney’s Office and SFPD didn’t rush in their decision making process and conducted a thorough investigation,” Lau’s attorney Sam Geller said in a statement provided to The Standard. “This tragedy is something that Ms. Lau continues to mourn while she learns to live with this unspeakable reality. She extends her condolences to the entire family, friends and community of the Oliveira-Pinto family.”
Jenkins emphasized the felony distinction of the charges, noting that Lau was allegedly driving at a high speed. Jenkins did not say exactly how fast Lau was allegedly driving, but an eyewitness told The Standard in March that the father who was killed in the crash was lying 70 feet away from the collision site.
The Standard previously reported in May that Lau was not impaired at the time of the crash and that police were probing whether her Mercedes had mechanical failures. However, investigators ultimately did not uncover any mechanical issues with the vehicle and instead found Lau at fault.
“We do not have any evidence that impairment or mechanical failure caused this collision,” Scott said Tuesday.
Jenkins explained that the long wait between Lau’s arrest and being charged was due to the lengthy investigation, which involved medical examinations of Lau, toxicology reports, and examinations of her car and its service records.
“If it’s not done thoroughly, I could file charges that I have to dismiss later,” Jenkins said. “We don’t want to retraumatize a family by putting them through a situation where ultimately the case doesn’t play out as it should.”