Last Updated on September 13, 2017 by CCAR Staff
A convicted drunken driver who struck and killed a 52-year-old construction worker at a Jurupa Valley intersection was sentenced Tuesday, Sept. 12, to 15 years to life in state prison.
Jerry Albert Munoz, 40, pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder for the 2016 death of Francis “Wayne” Hamilton of Norco. The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office dropped two related counts of driving under the influence resulting in great bodily injury.
Munoz killed Hamilton on the morning of March 5, 2016, after a night of heavy drinking.
According to Deputy District Attorney Kim Dittrich, Munoz was a part-time disc jockey and had been out with his brother and friends playing a house party in Whittier before he made the fateful drive to Jurupa Valley.
“The evidence showed he had been doing shots (of hard liquor) and drinking beer,” Dittrich said in an interview.
The party was broken up by police around midnight, after which Munoz headed east with a friend, James Mendoza, in his 2015 Chevrolet Silverado pickup. According to sheriff’s investigators, the men stopped in Riverside for food and possibly additional booze about 6 a.m., then headed into Jurupa Valley.
Hamilton was part of a three-man crew removing utility poles in the area of Christales Drive and 68th Street just after 9 a.m. when Munoz’s vehicle approached from the west, investigators said. The victim was standing adjacent to a utility truck, in a coned-off work space on the shoulder of the roadway.
“Mr. Munoz runs a stop sign at 54 mph and runs into Wayne,” Dittrich said. “The impact throws him skyward, and he lands on the utility truck. Everything was broken — his neck, his back, his arms, his teeth. There were massive internal injuries.”
Munoz’s pickup clipped the utility truck, causing the pickup to flip onto its side and slide about 200 yards, according to Dittrich.
Munoz, who had a blood-alcohol level of 0.2 — more than twice the legal limit to drive — suffered minor injuries, and his passenger suffered moderate injuries, the prosecutor said.
Hamilton was pronounced dead at the scene moments after he was struck.
“He took care of his parents until they died, allowing them to stay in the home they’d lived in since the 1920s,” Dittrich said. “His brothers and sisters were extremely affected by his death. One brother told me that Wayne was his best friend.”
According to court records, Munoz had a prior misdemeanor DUI conviction out of San Bernardino County from the early 2000s.
