Last Updated on March 21, 2022 by CCAR Staff
A Santa Clarita woman pleaded guilty Monday, March 21, to charges stemming from a wrong-way collision in a stolen pickup truck that crashed into four vehicles on the Foothill Freeway in Claremont and left one man dead and several others injured in 2018.
Nicole Danielle Thibault, 32, was immediately sentenced to 30 years and eight months in state prison following her plea to one count each of voluntary manslaughter and grand-theft auto, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, and eight counts of attempted murder, according to Deputy District Attorney Phil Stirling.
The sentence included a lifetime ban of Thibault’s driving privileges, along with $20,000 restitution and a waiver of her appellate rights, the prosecutor said.
Thibault stole a parked Ford F-150 in San Bernardino on Jan. 22, 2018, then drove through red lights and at unsafe speeds before entering the 210, where she drove westbound in the eastbound lanes for about 20 miles before the head-on collision that killed Daniel Castillo, 69, of Fontana, authorities said.
The 2011 pickup truck was reported to have been taken about 3:25 p.m. that day — with the owner’s 2-year-old son inside the vehicle — near a 7-Eleven store on Highland Avenue and H Street, according to the California Highway Patrol. The youngster was subsequently dropped off at Temple and H streets.
About 3:45 that afternoon, CHP dispatchers “received numerous calls of a wrong-way driver traveling westbound on the eastbound lanes of SR-210, within the center median shoulder,” according to the agency.
The truck then veered into oncoming traffic.
Thibault, among those injured in the crash, was arrested by the CHP and has remained jailed since.
