By PAUL ANDERSON
SANTA ANA — A 64-year-old man has been convicted of a drug-fueled collision that killed a 12-year-old boy crossing a Costa Mesa street on his bike.
Richard David Lavalle of Long Beach was convicted Thursday of second-degree murder in the Dec. 6, 2020 fatal collision with Noel Bascon at Junipero and Arlington drives. He is scheduled to be sentenced June 27.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Casey Cunningham told jurors in closing arguments that Lavalle failed a field sobriety test, showing them how he was unable to stand on one leg.
“He almost fell,” Cunningham said. “He is stumbling around.”
Police also saw he had “red eyes” and “blisters on the tongue,” which indicated drug usage and impairment to drive, Cunningham argued, adding that investigators initially thought he was high on marijuana but found that he had actually taken methamphetamine.
“He chose to consume methamphetamine prior to getting behind the wheel,” Cunningham said. “He well knew his act was dangerous to human life.”
Cunningham also pointed to the testimony of the boy’s father, Glen Bascon, who saw his son get run over.
Bascon testified that he and his son went out for a bike ride about 5 p.m. that day but he soon realized it was getting too dark, so he decided to return home. He said he “triple-checked” his son’s reflectors and lights on his bike before they left, and kept to the sidewalk when they could because it was safer.
Bascon said he was nearly across the street in the crosswalk when he saw Lavalle’s pickup truck “coming fast.”
“This guy came so fast, I was shocked,” he testified. “I started shouting `Hey!”‘ Bascon estimated Lavalle was driving between 40 mph to 50 mph.
“I was screaming to make him stop,” the tearful Bascon testified.
After he “heard a loud bang,” he frantically looked around for Noel, but couldn’t see him.
“That’s why I was so scared,” Bascon said. After the collision, “I heard slamming on the brakes.”
Lavalle got out of the truck and apparently “didn’t realize what he hit.” “I said, `What the heck did you do? Why didn’t you stop?”‘ Bascon testified.
He looked underneath the truck and saw the bike scrunched under it, but his son was not there. “The truck swallowed the bike,” Bascon said.
Ultimately, he found his son and estimated that he may have been catapulted about 120 feet away.
“He was thrown out by the strong impact of the truck into the middle of the street,” Bascon said.
Bascon saw that his son’s eyes were closed and that the boy was unresponsive, so he called for help, dialing 911 from witnesses at a skate park at the location.
“I saw blood coming from his mouth,” Bascon said.
“There happened to be a nurse who worked at a hospital at the skate park,” Bascon said. “He tried to do CPR.”
Former Costa Mesa Police Department Officer Chasen Gaunt, who now works for the Manhattan Beach force, testified that he joined the nurse in attempts to revive the boy until paramedics arrived to take over.
Bascon said he asked Lavalle, “Why didn’t you stop? There’s a very visible stop sign there.”
When Bascon got to the hospital with his wife and daughter, they were given the bad news about his son.
“I was told something you don’t want to hear from any medical staff: ‘Sorry, we did everything we could,”‘ Bascon recounted. “My wife just collapsed and I had to hold her.”
Bascon said he and his son would ride their bikes daily, and Noel would wear a bike helmet, along with elbow and knee pads.
Cunningham said in court papers that investigators found drugs in the pickup. A blood-draw about 11:05 p.m. that night found the defendant had 115 nanograms of methamphetamine in his system.
Lavalle was convicted in 2013 of driving under the influence in San Diego County, triggering an upgraded charge from manslaughter to murder.
Lavalle’s attorney, Jennifer Ryan of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, said her client “felt awful” when the collision occurred. The defendant’s wife, who was in the passenger’s seat of the truck, told police the methamphetamine police found belonged to her, Ryan said.
Lavalle was “cooperative with law enforcement at the scene every step of the way,” Ryan said.
Lavalle told officers that he had been working the whole day up on a ladder and had a bad back and hip to explain some of his difficulty standing on one leg and balancing as well as other field sobriety tests.
“This is a terrible tragedy. It was a horrible accident,” Ryan said. “This is not a murder.”
This is potentially a third-strike for Lavalle because he was convicted in August 2009 of armed bank robbery in federal court and sentenced in April 2010 to 35 months in federal prison, according to court records. He was returned to prison for another year when he violated terms of his supervised release in 2013.
Lavalle was also convicted of robbery in Los Angeles County in June 2018, court records show.