Two Woodbridge men accused of killing pedestrians in separate crashes last year have both pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter, FFXNow reported.
Carlos Nunez Morales and Michael Rambudhan each face a maximum of 10 years in prison for the DUI manslaughter charge.
On March 10, 2024, Morales, 26, was driving a pickup truck on I-495 near Alexandria’s Telegraph Road exit, FFXNow reported. He veered off the interstate and struck and killed Gregory Bruington, Jr. Bruington had parked his car on the side of the highway and was changing a tire. The collision also left a passenger inside Bruington’s vehicle seriously injured.
On May 24, 2024, Michael Rambudhan, 38, was driving northbound on North Kings Highway near Huntington Park Drive when his car left the roadway, struck a median, and continued onto the sidewalk where he struck and killed Lucius Gaskins, 54, before striking a tree.
Sentencing hearings in both cases are scheduled for August 22.
These crashes coincide with troubling data about drunk driving in the region. Although Fairfax County saw DUI fatalities drop nearly 23 percent last year, Arlington County experienced a 100 percent increase in DUI deaths in both 2022 and 2023. And despite improvements, Fairfax still averages a DUI crash every 13 hours.
Feature image courtesy vmargineanu/stock.adobe.com
