A jury has found California nurse Nicole Linton guilty of causing the fiery crash that killed six people after a three-week trial and just three hours of deliberation on Friday afternoon.
Linton, 41, faced six counts of second-degree murder and five counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence in the deadly August 2022 crash at La Brea and Slauson avenues in Windsor Hills. The jury found her guilty on all charges.
Prosecutors said the traveling nurse sped through a red light at 130 mph and slammed her Mercedes-Benz into several vehicles. The impact split one car in half and triggered a fiery nine-car pileup.
The victims included 23-year-old Asherey Ryan, who was eight and a half months pregnant, her boyfriend, Reynold Lester, and her 11-month-old son, Alonzo Quintero.
During opening statements, prosecutors said the impact threw Alonzo through the air before he landed at a stranger’s feet outside a nearby gas station. Surveillance footage showed witnesses picking up the baby from the ground.
Jurors were also shown Ryan’s charred body and a video of her unborn son, Armani, lying in the street with his umbilical cord still attached. Prosecutors said the collision ripped the baby from Ryan’s womb.
Two friends in another vehicle, 43-year-old Nathesia Lewis and 38-year-old Lynette Noble, also died in the fiery wreckage. Nine others, including Linton, also suffered injuries.
Linton’s defense team argues she suffered a mental health crisis at the time of the crash and may have experienced a lapse of consciousness.
They claim she had a seizure before the crash and noted that investigators found no evidence that she was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. They also said she was not using her phone, racing anyone, or involved in an argument or fight when the crash occurred.
Prosecutors told jurors they found no evidence that Linton suffered a seizure and argued that she left work upset and drove angrily.
“It’s going to be very important because the prosecution is going to argue that even if she was suffering from some sort of a mental health defect that she should’ve known better than to even get behind the wheel of a car,” legal expert Lou Shapiro told ABC7 Los Angeles before the trial. “So, when you take that into consideration, and you have the horrific tragedies and deaths that befell the victims, combining all that it’s an uphill battle for the defense.”
A medical test to provoke a seizure in Linton after the crash came back with no abnormal brain activity, prosecutors said. According to the LA Times, Linton jerked and twitched during the test in what prosecutors described as an attempt to fake a seizure.
Earlier court documents showed that Linton allegedly “floored the gas pedal for at least the 5 seconds leading up to the crash, going from 122 mph to 130 mph.” Prosecutors said she held the steering wheel steady as she barreled into the intersection.
Kimberly Linton, Nicole’s older sister, testified she noticed increasingly unusual behavior from Nicole in the days and hours leading up to the crash.
Kimberly says she had five video calls with her sister the afternoon of the crash. According to the New York Post, Kimberly said her sister was speaking “gibberish” and “complete nonsense” as she drove around the city.
In one call, Nicole said she planned to marry Will Smith and told her sister to “meet me at the altar.” In another, she said Nicole “popped up” naked. She also noted that Nicole had been “cleaning obsessively,” and that “the behavior was unusual.”
Linton remains in jail. A judge will sentence her on December 1. She faces a potential sentence of 90 years to life in prison.
