Outraged moms, grieving kids killed in vehicle crashes, to protest at California Capitol
Grieving women – most of whom lost their children in vehicle crashes across California – have banded together to organize a protest at the Capitol slated for Thursday afternoon against what they say is the state’s lenient response to fatal vehicle collisions.
Allison Lyman, the mother of Connor Lopez, 23, connected with other bereaved women to channel their sadness — and their rage over the light sentences in many vehicular homicide cases — into action. The Sacramento protest and rally will take place on the West Steps of the Capitol from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. April 23, on the one-year anniversary of the Elk Grove motorcycle crash that left Lopez lying dead on Sheldon Road.
In particular, the group is demanding that the state end criminal diversion for vehicular manslaughter cases, which allows defendants to avoid jail time and potentially have the charges against them dismissed. Lyman has thrown her support behind state Senator Roger Niello’s Senate Bill 953, which would mandate that vehicular manslaughter cases result in two violation points on the driver’s record even if that driver successfully completes diversion and the charges are dismissed.
The other women who helped plan the event include Amelia Snyder, whose son Julian, 17, died in a crash in Roseville in 2024; Erika Pringle, whose brother Andrew, 21, was killed in a Rosemont crash while crossing Folsom Boulevard in 2023; Michelle Silva, whose husband José Luis Silva, 55, died in a Midtown crash in 2024; Julia Romanenko, whose son Mikhael Romanenko, 27, was killed in a crash in San Francisco last year; Melissa Grant, whose son Braiden Flynn, 20, was killed in a 2025 crash in Folsom; and Kelly Lancellotti, whose daughter Giada, 13, was killed in a crash in South Lake Tahoe while riding her bike to a fishing derby last summer.
“I think this is why the laws haven’t been corrected and we have the crisis we have: It’s relying on victims to advocate and make change, and we’re broken,” Lyman told the women at a meeting in February to organize the event. “We’re broken people.”
Lyman’s son was fatally struck by a driver who has been charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. Lyman said the prosecutor warned her family that the woman who killed Lopez could be eligible for diversion.
In Lyman’s view, if the court granted diversion, the driver would face essentially no meaningful consequences for the death of her son.
“We live with his death every day. Every second of the day,” Lyman said. But for the driver who killed Lopez, she said, “There is no accountability.”
“We’re not asking to throw her in jail for life,” Lopez’s stepfather, John Lyman, previously told The Sacramento Bee. But the family said they wanted the driver to serve some jail time.
The vast majority of fatal vehicle crashes are preventable with changes to infrastructure and policy. Road modifications that force drivers to slow have been found effective at stopping or mitigating collisions before they occur. The faster the speed, the more likely a crash is to turn deadly; likewise, the slower the speed, the more likely it is that everyone involved in a crash will walk away from it.
But California has been slow to implement proven safety measures. The California Office of Traffic Safety has reported that 4,000 people have died in vehicle crashes in the state each year since 2021; UC Berkeley’s Traffic Injury Mapping System shows that from 2016 through 2020, 3,400 to 3,700 people died in California collisions annually.
Not all those incidents lead to criminal charges, though some do. And vehicular manslaughter cases that don’t meet the bar for “gross negligence” are often treated like unfortunate accidents in California’s criminal courts. People who kill others with their vehicles frequently serve no time in jail; they may be allowed to continue driving.
This reality made national news last month, when Mary Fong Lau — an elderly driver who ran over and killed an entire family of four at a San Francisco bus stop two years ago — was sentenced to probation and community service. The judge said she could apply for a new license in three years.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Matilde Ramos Pinto, 38, and Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, 40, had been on their way to the zoo with their toddler, Joaquim, and their 3-month old, Cauê. Investigators said Lau, then 78, had reached speeds up to 70 mph in her Mercedes SUV before she jumped the curb in West Portal, striking the family.
Although most don’t receive news coverage, similar stories abound in California. Lyman said she feels that she has to be a voice for her son as well as other families who live with the same pain.
At a hearing in her son’s criminal case last Friday, she begged the judge to send the woman who hit her son to jail. She saw it, she said, as some kind of justice for an incalculable loss.
