Woman in fatal Ceres DUI crash had boyfriend’s truck after his DUI arrest, police say
Hours before she was involved in a DUI crash that killed two Turlock men, the woman behind the wheel had helped pick up the same truck from her boyfriend, who had been arrested separately for DUI in Modesto, Ceres police said.
At about 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11, Ceres police arrested 28-year-old Danielle Morgan of Fair Oaks in connection with a crash at West Whitmore Avenue and Crows Landing Road. According to Ceres police, she ran a red light while driving a Ford F350 pickup south on Crows Landing, hitting a 2008 Nissan Altima with two male occupants who had been traveling east on Whitmore.
The men, 19-year-old Turlock residents Favian Reinoso and Yahir Gomez, were both pronounced dead at the scene.
According to Modesto Police Department spokeswoman Sharon Bear, the same Ford F350 pickup was involved in a DUI arrest earlier in the day at Vintage Faire Mall. Shortly before 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11, Modesto police stopped the owner of the Ford F350 pickup for speeding in the mall parking lot.
Bear said officers arrested 30-year-old David Petrik of Orangevale for DUI and being in possession of a concealed firearm in his vehicle. He was booked into the Stanislaus County jail.
Morgan and a male friend of Petrik’s went to the scene of the arrest at the mall and took possession of the truck. Bear said Petrik’s friend drove the truck away, with Morgan in the passenger seat.
Modesto police released the truck to the friend but did not check for DUI because, Bear said, there were “no obvious signs of intoxication, so no probable cause for a sobriety check.”
Morgan was arraigned Tuesday in Stanislaus County Superior Court. Her charges were reduced from her preliminary booking on two counts of murder with felony DUI to two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter, felony DUI and other enhancements. Her bail was set at $750,000 and she is next scheduled to appear in court Feb. 2, 2022.
The families of the victims have set up crowd funding accounts to pay for funeral and other costs. Reinoso’s GoFundMe is titled “Favian’s Funeral Expenses,” and Gomez’s is “Yahir Ulises Gomez Valladar funeral.”
“We have our hearts broken,” Gomez’s parents wrote on the page they created, “there’s no words to describe what (we’re) going through.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2021 at 4:02 PM.
