A Midland woman pleaded guilty to two counts of intoxication manslaughter Wednesday in the July 2019 deaths of 6-year-old twin girls and jurors are now hearing evidence in the punishment phase of her trial.
Angelica Garcia, 38, admitted she was drunk when she struck Mia and Mya Coy as they played outside their family-operated fireworks stand on the north service road of East Highway 80 at Club Drive.
Under state law, the Midland woman could be placed on probation or she could receive from two to 20 years in prison on each of the counts. If the jurors decide to send Garcia to prison, it will be up 70th Ector County District Court Judge Denn Whalen whether the sentences should be served consecutively.
Garcia’s plea agreement came at the start of what was supposed to be the second day of her trial. The range of sentencing she faces remains the same as if she was convicted by the jury.
Prosecutors told jurors during opening statements Monday that Garcia and her husband, Cornell Hunt, were drinking at Toby’s Lounge at the MCM Grande Hotel and Fun Dome for about three hours on July 13, 2019. They said the evidence will show Garcia consumed seven cherry vodkas and was traveling by herself in her Chrysler 200 when she blew a stop sign at Club Drive where the frontage road ends. According to the prosecutors, she then hit a curb and barricade signs and then the twins, only coming to rest after striking a portable light stand.
Following Garcia’s guilty plea, prosecutors began to put on witnesses for the punishment phase of the trial, including Izac Coy, the twins’ uncle, and Daniel Antonio Chavez, their cousin.
Garcia sat with her head down throughout the day, rocking in her seat at times and studiously avoiding surveillance videos, body cam footage and autopsy photos.
Coy testified his two children, ages 8 and 6 at the time, were playing with the twins when the tragedy unfolded. He said he didn’t see Garcia’s vehicle until it hit the barricade and there was so much dust in the air he couldn’t find his children. His wife found them uninjured, but then he saw his sister-in-law, Agueda, performing CPR on Mia.
He is the one who found Mya, he said. She was about 15 yards away from the fireworks stand and lifeless.
“My sister picked her up and took her to my brother,” Coy testified.
As CPR commenced on Mya, too, Coy said he saw Garcia.
“She looked at me when I walked up to the car,” he said. “She just had a blank stare. She just stared at me.”
He got within three to four feet of her and could smell alcohol on her and he noticed she’d urinated on herself, he said.
“I just asked her ‘What did you do? What did you do?” Coy said.
Garcia didn’t answer.
She tried to approach the girls, but was told to get away, he said.
Daniel Chavez testified his grandfather, parents and all of his aunts and uncles had been operating the stand for about three years at the time of the incident. He was conducting inventory with his dad that night.
“I heard a crashing sound, like a thud,” Chavez said. “I saw a bunch of dust in the air and as soon as I looked that way I saw something fly by me.”
It was one of the twins, the one the family lovingly called “Fatty,” he said.
“I was going to go and grab her and pick her up to see if she was OK,” Chavez said. Her mother, Agueda, a nurse, called out for him not to move her.
“It was too late. I already had her in my hands,” Chavez said.
They took her away and began to do CPR on her and her sister, “Skinny,” he said.
They were hoping to “keep them alive as much as they could” until help arrived, he said.
Chavez said he also smelled alcohol on Garcia and noticed she’d urinated in her pants. He watched her as she approached the twins.
“She went to my uncle to try to hold him or get close to him, but she was shoved away,” Chavez said, referring to the girls’ father, Raul. “There was a bunch of yelling and screaming at her to get away.”
Chavez said he took her to the back of the fireworks stand and called 911.
Some of the jurors stared at Garcia throughout the playing of the 911 call, which was punctuated by screams and wailing in the background and the sound of Chavez struggling to contain his sobs as he pleaded for help and tried to describe what had happened and the efforts to save the girls’ lives.
Chavez answered the dispatcher’s questions about the conditions of the girls, saying neither one was breathing and both were being worked on. He also provided her with Garcia’s vehicle description and license plate.
Toward the end of the call, Chavez twice tells the dispatcher the driver is trying to leave, but at that point officers had already arrived.
During follow-up questioning from Assistant Ector County District Attorney Melissa Williams, Chavez explained that a man he later learned was Garcia’s husband “showed up at the scene out of nowhere.”
“He put his arms around her and was making a movement, like ‘Let’s go. Let’s go,’” Chavez testified.
Chavez said that since the girls died, he has distanced himself from his family and become “more cold-hearted.” The entire family just isn’t as close as it once was, he said.
It’s hard seeing his surviving cousins get older without the twins, he said.
“There’s something missing. It’s just not the same,” Chavez said.
Jurors also watched several minutes of former Odessa Police Department Officer Ricky Scott’s body camera footage. Scott was the primary officer in charge of Garcia that evening both at the scene and at hospital where she received stitches to her lip.
While at the scene, Garcia was highly emotional and distraught. On the way to the hospital she fell asleep in the back of Scott’s patrol car and was heard snoring. At the hospital she was mostly subdued, soft spoken and spent most of the time with her eyes shut.
When asked what happened, Garcia told Scott she was trying to go home and she hit something.
“There were kids there. I didn’t know I hit any kids, I’m sorry,” Garcia sobs.
She admits to Scott she’d been drinking and for the next several minutes she repeatedly asks him if she’d killed anyone. When a paramedic comes to check her out and asks her if she’s hurt anywhere, she keeps interrupting him to ask about the twins and at one point tells him she doesn’t care if she’s hurt. She declined a ride to the hospital in an ambulance.
“Go check on them. I just want them to be OK,” Garcia sobs.
As time progresses, Garcia stops asking about the kids directly and instead starts asking, repeatedly, “What did I do? What did I do?”
Scott finally relents and tells her that she’d decided to get drunk and drive and she “messed up.”
“Please tell me what I have done,” Garcia pleads sobbing, repeating the question in excess of six times.
She then goes on to tell Scott that she doesn’t drink all of the time and telling him not to look at her like she’s a “piece of (expletive).”
When he eventually reminds her that she’s struck two kids, Garcia asks “How?” and “Where were they?” At one point, she said she didn’t see the road was closed or any signs indicating such.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t ever drink,” Garcia said. “What did I do? What did I do? I was just trying to get home.”
At another point, Garcia sobs, “I’m not this kind of person.”
Garcia later refused to undergo field sobriety tests, telling another officer she just wants to know if the kids are OK. She admits to the same officer her husband hadn’t want her to drive home.
Again and again, Garcia apologizes.
While at the hospital, Garcia says she had four cherry vodkas at Toby’s Lounge and said she wasn’t feeling well, but didn’t know if it was because she’d been drinking.
“The handcuffs aren’t helping,” Garcia said.
She told officers she didn’t know the name of the friends who had joined her and her husband at the bar or where they lived. She also repeatedly tried to interfere with the doctor who was trying to examine her mouth by raising her unhandcuffed arm. Scott eventually handcuffed it.
Jurors also learned Wednesday that blood tests performed at the hospital showed Garcia had a blood alcohol level of 0.106. The legal limit in Texas is 0.08.
Sgt. Lindsay Waychoff, a former accident reconstructionist for the Odessa Police Department testified Garcia’s air bag control module indicated her car was traveling at 64 mph five seconds prior to hitting the portable light stand, which was moved 35 feet upon impact. Her car showed no signs of breaking until six-tenths of a second after she hit the stand, Waychoff said.
The speed limit on the frontage road is 55 mph, she said.
Jurors also heard the testimony of Tarrant County Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Tasha Greenberg, who outlined the gruesome injuries of the girls while displaying photos taken at their autopsies. Medical intervention could not have saved either twin, she said.
Sharanae Swearengin, a former waitress at Toby’s Lounge, testified that based on her recollection, video surveillance and the bar tab from that night, she believes she served Garcia six cherry vodkas that night and a bartender served her a seventh. The last drink was served roughly 20 minutes before she left the bar, which was three minutes from the crash site.
Swearengin told defense attorney Michael McLeaish she did not believe Garcia was intoxicated when she was serving her, but in hindsight, after looking at surveillance video of Garcia walking out of the bar, she now believes she was showing signs of intoxication.
The twins’ parents settled a lawsuit with Toby’s Lounge for an undisclosed sum in December 2021 although the jurors have not been told that.
The jurors also heard from two former crime scene techs, Katelyn Paredes and Pat Harris, who were responsible for videotaping and photographing the scene and collecting evidence. Jurors were shown the clothing cut off the children at the hospital, photos of a single shoe from each of the girls where they landed after they were struck, and photos of the crushed car.
Harris testified he worked more than 400 death scenes during his career and the deaths of the twins are one of the two most memorable and tragic cases he ever had.
