Santa Rosa man involved in deadly crash had previous DUI

A Santa Rosa man charged with murder in a fatal drunken-?driving crash was in court the morning of the accident because his electronic alcohol-?monitoring device was broken, prosecutors said Friday.

Rafael Prieto-Gonzalez, 24, had a previous drunken-driving conviction that required him to wear a device on his ankle, prosecutor Craig Brooks said.

It was not working properly, so he was fitted with a GPS tracking device instead, Brooks said.

Later that day, Prieto-Gonzalez got drunk with two men at a Santa Rosa Avenue motel, according to witnesses at his preliminary hearing Friday.

Police said he got behind the wheel of a Ford Explorer and plowed into a tree on Commerce Boulevard in Rohnert Park, killing passenger Abel Acosta, 44, of St. Helena.

It was unclear if authorities would have been able to prevent Prieto-Gonzalez from driving if he had been wearing the alcohol monitoring device, which measures alcohol in a person’s perspiration and sends a signal to probation officers.

The devices were prone to malfunctioning before the county switched to a different company, a probation official said.

Prieto-Gonzalez later was charged with murder under a theory that he knew the dangers of driving while intoxicated but did it anyway. He had been convicted of drunken driving in 2012.

He also faces counts of manslaughter, hit-and-run, car theft and robbery that could result in a life prison sentence if he is convicted.

At Prieto-Gonzalez’s preliminary hearing Friday, a man who saw the crash described helping Prieto-?Gonzalez get out of the car as Acosta lay fatally injured across the front seat.

Jaime Hernandez said the driver tugged at Acosta for a moment in a failed effort to get him out and then took off on foot.

“I told him to wait,” Hernandez testified Friday in a Sonoma County courtroom. “He said in English to me … ‘I’m gone.’?”

Prieto-Gonzalez, who witnesses said reeked of alcohol, was spotted by a police officer about a half-mile away and arrested.

He was accused of stealing the SUV from Julio Vega, a man he and Acosta had been drinking with earlier in the day.

Vega told police Prieto-?Gonzalez threw him to the ground and threatened him and his family if he told anyone about the theft, Rohnert Park Police Detective Deborah Lamaison testified.

Prieto-Gonzalez and Acosta left Vega at a Santa Rosa Avenue pool hall, where Vega crawled into a dumpster and slept for about 12 hours before calling his wife to pick him up, Lamaison said.

You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@ppayne.