A 21-year-old Carson man apologized to a mom for a crash he caused at a Long Beach intersection last year that killed her 21-year-old daughter and “will forever haunt me.” As part of a plea deal with prosecutors, Saul Alfas was ordered by the court to write an apology to the mother of Jacqueline Zamarripa, the Long Beach woman who died June 16, 2023, after the pickup truck she was riding in collided with Alfas’s SUV as he was doing doughnuts at Willow Street and Caspian Avenue. The force of the crash caused the pickup’s driver to lose control and hit a tree in the median, police have said.
Zamarripa, a passenger, was ejected from the truck. Judge Richard Goul on Wednesday, June 12, also ordered Alfas to pay more than $10,000 in restitution to Zamarripa’s mother, who was not at the hearing. Alfas pleaded no contest to vehicular manslaughter in March and was sentenced to one year in county jail and five years of probation, court records show.
His driver’s license was suspended for three years, and he was also ordered to perform community service and to write the letter and read it in court. In the letter, Alfas started by apologizing to Zamarripa’s family “for the pain and suffering I caused.” He said he was not thinking and said he wished he had been smarter that night.
“If I’m honest, there’s not a day or night I haven’t cried,” Alfas read in court on Wednesday, June 12. “My stupid actions took your beautiful life,” he said to Jacqueline Zamarr.
