Driver stays locked up

Carolyn Hileman - The Voice* | July 1, 2008

Not the baby girl dying on the sidewalk, not the woman splayed across his windshield, not the car he’d banged into three minutes earlier, not taking responsibility for wiping out a family on a Sunday afternoon bike ride.

Jesse Rolando Astorga, 27, of Phelan has been trying to run since noon Sunday. The District Attorney’s Office put a stop to it Monday when it filed murder charges, ensuring he’ll stay behind bars.

“We don’t want this guy getting out. We know nothing about him,” said police Lt. Joe Cirilo.

Hector Campos, left, 26, of San Bernardino, Nicole Padilla, 28, Fontana and Sanna, 27, of Rialto gathered around the accident scene after placing flowers at the site where a Rialto family of four was struck by a SUV while riding their bikes in the 200 block of South Willow Avenue on Sunday in Rialto. The crash killed a 2-year-old girl and left her mother, father and 1-year-old brother with serious injuries. (LaFonzo Carter/ Staff Photographer)”This family didn’t even have a chance. But you can only run so much. The consequences are before him now.”

Police had to drive only one block before descending on what one officer referred to as the “call of my nightmares.”

Astorga, whom authorities said was obviously drunk, ran his 2008 Honda Pilot into a median on South Willow Drive, veered to the right, jumped a curb and plowed the two-ton SUV into a family of four on the sidewalk.

He knocked William Dinoso Dean, 28, to the ground and ripped a two-wheeled basket carrying two babies from the back of Dean’s bike.

Glenda Brooks, 26, who was bringing up the rear of the family outing, was thrown off Astorga’s windshield into the gutter when he continued across the street and slammed into another curb.
“This guy was still trying to start the car when we got there,” Cirilo said.

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