Crime & Safety

No Contest Plea In Lafayette Vehicular Manslaughter Case

Four years after a crash killed one man and injured five at an intersection outside Acalanes High School, a Tracy man pleads no contest to causing the crash.

A Tracy businessman said to be "legally unconscious" at the time of a multi-car collision that left one man dead and five injured in a Lafayette intersection in 2007 has entered a "no contest" plea to a gross vehicular manslaughter charge. He will be sentenced June 10.

David Caspillo, 47, was never incarcerated and continued to drive in the four years since the crash that killed Dale Zenor, 55, of Walnut Creek. Caspillo initially pleaded "not guilty by reason of insanity" in the wake of the March 22, 2007, collision at Stanley Boulevard and Pleasant Hill Road. His first trial on felony vehicular manslaughter charges ended in a hung jury, with 10 jurors in favor of conviction and two opposed.

A second trial was scheduled to begin later this month, but the no-contest plea was accepted in a plea bargain this week.

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For Greg Mariano, Zenor's cousin, the plea brings a sense of resolution — with misgivings.

"The thing I didn't expect is in some ways a feeling of relief that there is an end in sight," Mariano said Wednesday. "I am relieved I don't have to listen to any more stalling excuses... no more coroner's reports or eyewitness accounts of Dale's movements after the crash. It still is hard to believe the distance Dale and his car traveled in the air from a downhill position."

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Caspillo was accused of crashing his BMW into a line of cars stopped at a light in front of Acalanes High School at a speed more than double the posted 25 mph speed limit, ultimately rear-ending Zenor's Mazda Miata and sending it over cars in front of it.

Police said Caspillo told them at the scene of the crash that he was using a GPS device to find his brother's address at the time of the crash. Witnesses said he drove through a stop sign and appeared to be accelerating seconds before the collision. Defense attorney Dirk Manoukian produced medical evidence showing that Caspillo had a neurological condition that caused him to lose consciousness in the moments before the crash. He compared his client's state of mind to sleepwalking.

"That defies common sense, and it is an insult to Dale Zenor," Deputy District Attorney Simon O'Connell told jurors in closing remarks at the end of Caspillo's first trial in September. The prosecutor also called into question the validity of statements from a doctor who testified that Caspillo was having a manic episode that may have led to his loss of consciousness. 

"Not until he was paid $1,200 by the defense did he ever report this as being imaginable," O'Connell told jurors as the first trial came to a close.

"His ability to drive at that speed and stay in the lane" is what convinced 10 of the 12 jurors that he was guilty, said Kelly Irvine of Moraga, the jury's foreperson.  They didn't buy into the argument that he could have been "legally unconscious" in the moments before the fatal collision, she said at the time.

Caspillo could be sentenced to up to a year in jail when he returns to court June 10 with the stipulation that he do a minimum of two thirds of his sentence with probation for three years thereafter.


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