Bronx Mom Carmen Huertas Taunted Daughter And Friends While Driving Drunk

Carmen Huertas was driving her 11-year-old daughter Brittany and several of her friends to a sleepover when she began speeding. Her passengers nervously asked her not to drive so fast, to which Huertas, who had a blood alcohol level of of 0.132 responded: “You think this is fast?Just wait until we get on the highway.”

Her 1998 Mercury Sable eventually flipped off the road, ejecting one of her daughter’s friends,  11-year-old Leandra Rosado, from the car, killing her. Another of Brittany’s friends, Kayla Sanchez, recalls the aftermath of the accident from her hospital bed:

The car was shaking. And then when I woke up there was a lot of light around, ambulance and police and one nice firefighter who helped me.

Huertas had taken the girls, who ranged from age 11 to 14, to a party in Chelsea before chauffeuring them to a sleepover at her home. At the party, Huertas consumed several glasses of alcohol. Her victims’ parents are shocked not only at her decision to drive the girls while drunk, but that no one at the party stopped her from getting into her car. 

Asks Lenny Rosado, Leandra’s father:

It’s not a mistake, it’s not an accident - it’s negligence. There were adults at the party. Why didn’t they take the initiative?

A report from 1995 had alcohol-related car crashes ranked as the third leading cause of death for Latinos in the United States. The report included several factors for why this might be, including:

• drag racing.
• “proving” one can drink and drive.
• the combination of alcohol and illicit drugs.
• the enforced silence of young males’ girlfriends.
• the growing tendency of Latino girls to engage in the same behaviors.
• speeding and reckless driving.
• inattention to or inability to read signs and signals.
• the custom of gifting sons with powerful sports cars, which often end up demolished.
• combining alcohol with illicit drugs and inhalants.

Some of these seem a leeeetle bit xenophobic to us, as they equate customs or habits among a small, particular group of Latinos with Latinos nationwide, but we do see some of these factors as play in Huertas’ case. 

Anyway: Sad. Sad for the people involved, sad that a couple had to needlessly lose their daughter because some woman was a selfish idiot, and sad that Huertas is contributing to statistics supporting a hurtful and negative stereotype about Latino drivers.

Parents of victims furious to learn that DWI mom mocked her own daughter’s pleas to be careful [NY Daily News]