A statement repeated to a jury and sternly directed at the defendant rang true Wednesday afternoon: “I’m going to be in so much trouble,” bringing a decade-long criminal case to a close.
According to an emergency services report displayed in court, these were the words repeatedly uttered by 31-year-old Paul Anthony Garcia to an air evacuation team nearly a decade ago after he got behind the wheel of his pickup truck while under the influence of alcohol after leaving a party on Sept. 1, 2012.
Garcia drove into oncoming traffic and struck the vehicle of 24-year-old Destiny Ann Bruce, a Pipe Creek resident, killing her and seriously injuring her 11-yearold sister who was asleep in the backseat.
It took a mere 20 minutes of deliberation for a jury to find Garcia guilty of the second-degree felony of intoxication manslaughter for a second time.
“This should’ve been the last photograph of Destiny Ann Bruce,” Assistant Criminal District Attorney Alessandra Deike said, showing a happy photo of Bruce and her sister earlier that day. “On Sept. 1, 2012, after her and her sister went to the Kendall County Fair here in Boerne. This should’ve been the last picture. This should’ve been how the family ended that day with their memory of her. But it’s not.
“That’s not the last image this family gets to remember. This is the image the family gets to remember,” Deike said, displaying a photo of Bruce’s lifeless body after the accident.
Garcia had been found guilty of this charge once before, but the Texas appellate court granted a request for a retrial because a blood draw was performed without a warrant. Garcia’s first guilty verdict was handed down July 7, 2014.
The proceedings in this trial were heated and emotional, as family members of both Garcia and Bruce lined the pews on either side of the courtroom and details of the graphic scene from that night were recounted.
Isabel Zapata and Ricardo Carrillo were riding to Bandera from San Antonio that evening when they came across the accident and attempted to render aid.
“All they could see were little hands on the window yelling and crying and we didn’t know exactly what was happening,” Zapata testified. “So, he had me get off the bike and was hollering at me to call 911. What I saw was, he (Carrillo) tapped the window and she jumped up and turned around and handed me a little girl. …
“This little girl was just asking for her sister, for her sister.”
The recording of the 911 call made by Zapata that night was played for the court, and the heart-wrenching cries of a young girl could be heard as those at the scene said, “We’re trying to help you.”
Evidence submitted in court showed the two vehicles made impact nearly in the shoulder of Bruce’s lane – indicating she had attempted evasive measures – but Garcia was entirely in her lane. Expert testimony showed Garcia never attempted to brake before impact, only stopping when his pickup veered off the road into a ditch a few hundred feet from the impact site.
Bruce was hit on the driver’s side and flipped, with the vehicle landing on its driver’s side and taking much of the impact. Images of Bruce’s small hatchback showed the entire driver’s side was torn to shreds and falling off its chassis, with her driver’s side door and engine ripped apart.
In closing arguments, Garcia’s defense attorney, Dante Dominguez, repeated testimony suggesting Bruce could have been saved. Dominguez argued the blood draw showing Garcia had a blood alcohol level of .18 – more than double the intoxication minimum – was based on blood serum rather than “whole blood,” which he said was not a method intended for criminal prosecution.
However, ADA Manuel Cardenas called the defense’s closing arguments laughable.
“I’m going to be in so much trouble,” Cardenas quoted Garcia as saying. “That’s all he cares about.”
This led to an objection from Dominguez.
“I’m going to be in so much trouble,” Cardenas said after convening with the judge, moving to the opposite side of the court from the jury and looking directly at the defendant and loudly repeating the phrase several times before Dominguez called another objection.
After closing arguments, the jury deliberated for a short period and found Garcia guilty of the second-degree felony of intoxicated manslaughter.
Garcia’s bond was revoked despite Dominguez pointing out the defendant had shown up to all hearings and followed probationary terms in the six years leading up to the retrial.
Garcia turned to the seven sobbing family members and friends who sat behind him in the pews for most of the trial, hugged his grieving mother and shared emotional farewells before being escorted away into police custody.
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