Repeat DUI offender sentenced

Erica D. Johnson

Friday, Aug. 8, 2003 | 11:07 a.m.

Alice Sheldon should have been celebrating her 36th wedding anniversary Monday with her husband, Russell. Instead she was preparing a statement to read to the man who killed him.

Russell Sheldon, 58, was jogging less than a mile from his Las Vegas home when he was mowed down by a drunken driver.

In an instant the couple's dreams of retiring and traveling the country together visiting their grandchildren and going on church missions were shattered, Alice Sheldon said.

"I've lost my soul mate and my best friend," she said Thursday, moments before Ortega was to be sentenced for the crime. "I've been cheated out of my entire future with the man I love."

Authorities say repeat DUI offender Alberto Perez Ortega, 33, hit Sheldon near the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard North and Lamb Boulevard on New Year's Eve and drove several yards with Sheldon on his hood.

When Sheldon's body was tossed from the car, police say, Ortega kept going.

Prosecutors say Ortega's blood alcohol level was about 0.23 when it was taken hours after the crash. The legal blood alcohol limit is Nevada is 0.10. A law passed in the Legislature in May lowers that to 0.08 on Sept. 23.

"I have one question for you," Alice Sheldon said to Ortega in court Thursday. "How could you have left my husband to die alone in a pool of his own blood?"

In a brief statement to the court Ortega did not discuss the details of the collision, but asked District Judge Jackie Glass to be lenient.

"I would just like to request the court to have mercy on me," he said through a Spanish interpreter. "I have no more words now."

Glass sentenced Ortega to the maximum penalty, eight to 20 years in prison, on one count each of DUI causing death and leaving the scene of an accident.

Ortega, who had pleaded guilty to the charges as the result of a plea agreement, was also ordered to pay $6,476 in restitution. The sentence was met with wails from Ortega's family, who packed the back row of the courtroom.

Before handing down the sentence, Glass commented on the heinous nature of Ortega's offense.

"You ask me for mercy," she said. "When you're driving and you hit someone and they're rolling off the hood of the car and you leave, where was the mercy then?"

Ortega's attorney, Chris Rasmussen, described the collision as tragic, but called the maximum sentence "excessive."

He said maximum penalties should be reserved for the "worst of the worst."

"I don't think this was the worst of the worst," he said. "This wasn't intentional. This was an accident."

But prosecutor Gary Booker said repeat DUI offenders such as Ortega need to be stopped. Ortega was convicted of another DUI offense in January 2001, he said.

"He's aware of the ramifications of getting a DUI," he said.

Booker said witnesses who saw the accident gave police a description of Ortega's Chevrolet sedan, which was badly damaged from the collision. Parts of Ortega's vehicle were left at the scene of the crime, he said.

"This was a bad crash," he said. "There was blood everywhere. And we know the defendant left."

In a similar case Michael Krivak last month pleaded guilty to one count of DUI causing death and two counts of leaving the scene of an accident in the collision that killed Chris Holt, 44, who was bicycling with his 8-year-old son.

Krivak, 40, fled the scene with Chris Holt on the hood of his car before getting out of the vehicle and tossing off the body. Krivak had at least 13 prior DUI offenses in various states.

He faces two to 50 years in prison when he is sentenced in September.

Sheldon's daughter, Kelley, said Ortega has shown little remorse for his actions.

"You took away a husband, a father and a grandfather," she said. "Then you left him like a dead animal in the street."