Feb 01 2009
DUI driver, Gabriel Delrisco, kills three kids in fatal crash, had 26 traffic infractions on his record
Gabriel Delrisco is a menace to society.
One week ago, a south Miami-Dade County family was destroyed because Delrisco, who has had 26 traffic violations over the past eight years, rammed his SUV into their Ford Windstar minivan at a stoplight on South Dixie Highway and SW 211th Street.
In less than an instant, Mirian and Hector Serrano lost their three children – Hector, 10, Esmeralda, 7, and Amber, 4 – when Delrisco, a former truck driver turned mobile ultrasound operator, struck the rear of their minivan at a high rate of speed.
According to various accounts in South Florida media outlets, there were no skid marks at the scene to indicate Delrisco made an effort to brake his SUV.
The 40-year-old Delrisco’s post-accident blood test revealed an alcohol content three times over the state limit of .08. A second test, taken at the hospital where Delrisco was treated, still showed above-the-limit traces of alcohol in his system 24 hours after the incident that left Hector and Mirian Serrano without their three children.
The worst thing about this is that, as is often the case in South Florida, Delrisco still had a valid driver’s license despite having been stopped and given various traffic and moving violation tickets – 26 in all – since 2001.
To anyone who lives in South Florida it’s no secret that the area is one of the most dangerous driving environments in the nation. There is no reliable or inexpensive public transportation system in Miami-Dade County, and its rapid growth from a medium-sized Southern tourist city to a congested metropolis made Miami and its surrounding communities extensively car-dependent.
The Serrano’s tragedy began when Hector woke his three children up and placed them in the passenger compartment of the family minivan to drop off wife Mirian at Jackson Memorial Hospital. It was before dawn, and Hector did not want to leave the kids alone at home while he made the long commute from Homestead to downtown Miami.
It was what any responsible man would have done, but he was placing his faith on the broken beyond repair traffic courts system and on luck that if he had gone to drop off his wife at Jackson without incident before, why should last Sunday have been any different? After all, he was only a few blocks away from his own home when he stopped at the soon-to-be fatal intersection.
Serrano was like many in South Florida who are unaware of just how bad things are for drivers and pedestrians here. Not only do people who don’t´drink drive like demons anyway, but the traffic courts system here is badly broken .
In a county with millions of cars and drivers, traffic courts are now overburdened, hamstrung when the ticketing officer either is a no-show in court or writes up a driver for the wrong infraction, and perceived as a cash machine for local governments at a time of decreasing property taxes.
Perhaps that’s why a menace to society such as Gabriel Delrisco still has a valid driver’s license despite a long list of infractions, which include various charges of reckless driving, driving the wrong way on an expressway, and a DUI conviction which resulted in a six-month suspension of his driver’s license.
You’d think that after so many tickets and that DUI conviction that Delrisco would have stopped drinking before getting behind the wheel or, when sober, driving with a bit more care. But, no. His need for booze and the thrill of driving recklessly – his selfish indulgences – led him to slam into the Serranos’ minivan and killing three innocent kids.
The excuse given to us by the legal system is that traffic courts are jammed to the limit. Judges often have to let people like Delrisco go free with adjudication of records if the accused pay the fines and go to traffic school.
Fortunately, on the same day that Hector, Esmeralda and Amber Serrano were buried, a Miami-Dade judge denied him bond and ordered him kept behind bars.
