Woman sentenced to prison term in fatal reckless driving case

By Dave Toplikar

Thursday, Aug. 18, 2011 | 12:25 p.m.

A woman who went into hiding for more than two weeks after a fatal hit-and-run crash in early January on Interstate 15 that killed 44-year-old Inaya Sabra will be going to a Nevada state prison for at least six years.

Natalie Dawn Dubuisson, 31, who was penitent and crying during her sentencing today in Clark County District Court, will serve from six to 13 years for leaving the scene of an accident and from two to six years on a reckless driving charge. Both sentences will run concurrently.

In handing down the sentence, Judge Abbi Silver said “My sentence sends out a message to the community that you can’t drive recklessly and you can’t leave the scene of a crime ... She not only left the scene, but it took her two weeks to be found.”

The judge said that Dubuisson also has a history of poor driving and had been convicted before of DUI .

Silver also doubted Dubuisson’s claim that after the accident she was kidnapped, robbed and taken to Primm by an unknown person. The judge said that story was designed to cover up the help that Dubuisson had in getting away.

“There’s a whole cockamamie story about being picked up and robbed,” Silver said. “I can understand it as far as not wanting to get the other person in trouble. But once again, I have to send a message that cockamamie stories and coverups are not to be tolerated.”

Before the sentencing, Deputy District Attorney Bruce Nelson said that on Jan. 11, Dubuisson was going 85 to 100 mph when she rear-ended a truck on I-15 near the Blue Diamond Road interchange, causing the truck to go off the road and roll over, seriously injuring the driver, Matthew Kedzierski.

Nelson said Dubuisson lost control of her car then continued down the roadway and struck another vehicle, which was being driven by Sabra, who was ejected when the vehicle rolled over. Sabra was taken to University Medical Center, where she died.

Nelson said Dubuisson then got out of her 2005 Mercedes Benz and phoned someone, who apparently came and picked her up from the scene before any law enforcement officers arrived.

“Either she called somebody, or by sheer coincidence, somebody who was willing to give her a ride just happened to be passing by, stopped, picked her up and left,” Nelson said. “The point is, she left in another vehicle. She didn’t drive her own car away. She basically left her vehicle at the scene.”

Nelson said Dubuisson then went into hiding for two weeks before making contact with police. Nelson said she submitted several letters from her friends to the court and “I can’t help wondering if one of them isn’t from a friend who helped pick her up.”

Nelson said he disagreed with one of the comments in the letters that Dubuisson is not a “typical hit-and-run drunk driver.”

“I’m sorry, but this is your typical hit-and-run drunk driver,” Nelson said. “She admitted being in a nightclub shortly before this happened. There is no reason to run away other than she was intoxicated. If she truly just fell asleep and crashed, why wouldn’t she stay there? Why would she literally abandon her car on the street and go off with somebody else?”

Dubuisson’s attorney, Michael Maceli, told the judge that Dubuisson has always maintained the same story since she initially came to him seeking legal help.

“What she said is that, after she fell asleep and was in the accident, she was blacked out, and she was taken in a car by somebody that she didn’t know. The next point is she wakes up, she’s almost at Primm, driving south on the 15, and that’s the first thing she remembers. The people whose car she was in took her wallet and at a stoplight, she jumped out of the car and runs off,” Maceli said. “That’s what she’s told me from the beginning.”

Maceli said Dubuisson never gave that statement to police. The judge wanted to know what she did after she was kidnapped and robbed.

“After she gets out of the car, she runs to a gas station and I believe she contacts her sister,” Maceli said. “At some point when she finds out — because I believe this is all over the news — when she finds out what happened, she freaks out. ... She doesn’t go home for two weeks.”

She eventually talked to one of her professors at a paralegal school she was attending, who convinced her she needed to contact an attorney, Maceli said. Maceli said when Dubuisson came to him, he contacted the Nevada Highway Patrol.

NHP troopers said they collected DNA evidence from her and then issued an arrest warrant after her DNA matched evidence taken from her vehicle’s air bag. She was taken into custody in March.

“If this truly happened the way she claimed, why would she not call police?” Nelson said. “Her story makes no sense and is frankly just silly. If that’s the position she wants to take to assuage her own conscience, then that’s fine. But that’s not what happened in this case. She killed one person, seriously injured another person, then took off. ... In the state’s opinion she was drunk, she knew she was drunk and that’s why she ran away.”

Nelson also said he didn’t believe she was kidnapped.

“If she was kidnapped, she would have called the police,” he said.

Dubuisson’s voice broke and she cried as she told the judge she was sorry for the families she had hurt in the crash.

“I fell asleep. And I was taken. I would have never left the scene. I was taken. I am very sorry that I did go into hiding. I was scared and I didn’t know what to do. I had just graduated. My whole life I had felt was ruined. And I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. But when I finally came to my senses, I did turn myself in,” Dubuisson said.

She said she knew that she was wrong for hiding, but insisted that she didn’t leave the scene.

“I was taken. I was pulled out of my car, put into another car. They did take my wallet. They took everything. When I went to get swabbed, I had nothing to even prove who I was because everything was in my wallet,” she said. “But it doesn’t make up for what I did. I know it was my fault. I know I took somebody’s life and I live with that every day. I can’t sleep. And I know that doesn’t matter. And I will do whatever the court wants me to do. I just want another chance, that’s all. And I am so sorry to the people that I have hurt.”

“I’m not a bad person. I know everybody here thinks that I am, but I am not a bad person,” she said, crying.

Dubuisson said she had been doing community service and wished that she could set up some kind of a fund for the people she hurt.

Also speaking at the sentencing was Faddy Sabra, one of two sons of Inaya Sabra, the woman killed in the accident. He told the court that his mother came over to the United States from Lebanon and worked for over 15 years in the local gaming industry, starting out as a card dealer and eventually became gaming manager at Paris casino-hotel.

Sabra said he has been getting nightmares every night since his mother was killed. He said he wanted Dubuisson to be punished.

“But overall, I want her in jail because I believe she is so dangerous that she will eventually speed down another street and hit another car,” he said.