Suspect charged with fatal accident in Key Biscayne was driving drunk, police say
A 23-year-old South Florida woman appeared in court Monday after being accused of driving while intoxicated and causing a fatal accident on Rickenbacker Causeway.
Jessica Fuentes stood before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Mindy Glazer and heard the charges against her: DUI., vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter.
The accident, which occurred Friday around 8 p.m., killed Key Biscayne resident Paula Curra Rafetti who was driving with her husband in the passenger’s seat.
According to prosecutors Fuentes left Whiskey Joe’s, where she works, and rear-ended a car, causing it to go over the median, rolling a few times and then slamming into a chain-link fence. The chain-link fence “impaled the victim,” according to a prosecutor.
Curra Rafetti was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital where she later died from her injuries. Her husband Diego Rafetti sustained minor injuries and was treated and released.
In video of a court hearing posted by 7 News, Fuentes’ mother pleaded with the judge, saying that it was a “freak accident” and claimed that the victim was not wearing a seat belt. She brought Fuentes’ baby to the courtroom and said that Fuentes “would suffer even more not being with her baby.”
Assistant State Attorney Laura Addams clarified that the victim was wearing her seat belt, and said that the state doesn’t consider it an accident when the accused is driving with “twice the legal limit of alcohol in their system and causes another person’s death.”
Fuentes failed all sobriety tests at the scene of the crash and a Breathalyzer test, performed three hours after, registered twice the legal limit.
Police blocked access on and off the island for over seven hours during the investigation.
