A street racer whose driving led to the death of a Southern California News Group editor in Santa Ana five years ago was sentenced to nine years in prison on Friday, April 4.
Prosecutors asked for Ricardo Tolento to spend 11 years behind bars, but new sentencing laws prohibit that, Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Menninger said.
Tolento’s defense lawyer wanted him to receive seven years of probation.
A morning street race between Tolento, who was driving an Infiniti, and Louie Robert Villa, in a BMW, killed Gene Harbrecht on July 30, 2020. It was Villa who actually crashed into Harbrecht’s pickup. But prosecutors argued that Tolento helped set the deadly events in motion.
The pair “turned Bristol (Street) into their own personal race track and a man paid the ultimate price,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Brian Orue told jurors during the trial.
A longtime Register editor remembered by colleagues a “newsman to his core” whose “veneer of amusing and engaging grumpiness” couldn’t mask a “heart of gold,” Harbrecht, 67, had been with the paper since 1984 and at the time of his death was the national and international editor for the Southern California News Group, which publishes the Register and 10 other local newspapers.
On Friday, after bailiffs led Tolento, shackled and clad in orange jail clothing, into the courtroom, he turned and smiled at about 20 supporters. One provided a written statement on his behalf to Menninger, but no others addressed the court.
Prior to sentencing, Tolento expressed remorse for Harbrecht’s death.
“I have taken responsibilities for my actions,” he said. “I have taken steps to better myself and have changed a lot and am closer to God. I continue to push to redeem myself and improve, but no actions can undo the harm I have done.”
An Orange County Superior Court jury earlier this year deliberated for two and a half hours before finding Tolento, now 29, guilty of felony counts of vehicular manslaughter and hit and run, along with a misdemeanor count of engaging in a speed contest and a sentencing enhancement for fleeing the scene.
Dashboard camera footage captured by a driver who was stopped behind Tolento and Villa at the Bristol and 17th streets intersection showed their two vehicles rapidly accelerate and pull away from the other drivers on northbound Bristol as soon as the light turned green.
During a half-mile stretch, Tolento was traveling at an average speed of 77 mph in a 45 mph zone and was outpacing Villa, according to testimony during the trial.
Villa then “slingshotted” around Tolento and crashed into Harbrecht, who was making a left hand turn from the other side of Bristol onto Santa Clara.
Harbrecht’s pickup was forced off the roadway, onto a sidewalk and into a fence. Bystanders pulled him from the wreckage. But he died minutes later.
An injured — and drunk — Villa remained at the scene of the crash with his damaged vehicle. But Tolento was able to maneuver around the collision and kept driving.
Tolento briefly stopped a short distance away to call 911. The dispatcher told him they were already aware of the crash, and Tolento didn’t inform them that he was involved. Tolento continued with his errands — including taking a Covid test in Irvine and going to a church and a tire shop — until he was pulled over several hours later.
In an exchange captured on an officer’s body-worn camera, Tolento denied that he had been at the scene of the crash, even after being told that there was video of his car.
The defense in Tolento’s trial argued that Villa was solely to blame for the crash. During his courtroom testimony, Tolento repeatedly denied that he was racing Villa.
Tolento — who was in a lane to the right of Villa — said he needed to merge since the lane he was in ended on the other side of the intersection and was worried that Villa wasn’t going to let him over. Tolento said he accelerated in order to get ahead of villa and claimed he was already slowing down when Villa abruptly pulled around him and crashed into Harbrecht.
Asked why he lied to the officer who later pulled him over and arrested him, Tolento cited a previous hit-and-run he had been convicted of and noted that he had a modification to the exhausted on his car that made it louder, explaining that he was worried authorities were going to try to tie him to a crash he believed he wasn’t directly involved in.
Since Villa was drunk at the time of the crash and had a previous DUI conviction, he was found guilty of a more serious count of second-degree murder during an earlier trial. In 2022, an apologetic and remorseful Villa was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison during an emotional hearing in which he was embraced by Harbrecht’s widow before being led out of the courtroom.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.