Two years ago, a Marion County jury found Lincoln Smith guilty of killing seven farmworkers when he crashed his semitruck into a van stopped on the side of Interstate 5.
After deliberating for almost eight hours over two days, the jury found 54-year-old Smith guilty of seven charges of second-degree manslaughter and reckless driving.
However, based on Smith’s evidence in court that he was sleepy, not intoxicated, at the time of the May 18, 2023, collision, jurors cleared him of driving while intoxicated.
At the hospital, the resident of North Highlands, California, had methamphetamine, fentanyl, and cocaine traces in his blood. State troopers also discovered a scale in his truck’s cab, along with hypodermic needles and a piece of speed in his jeans pocket.
When the crash happened just north of Albany, where the interstate crosses the Santiam River, Smith testified that the effects of a late-night drug binge had subsided by the next morning, stating that he had merely fallen asleep at the wheel and failed to notice the exit for a rest stop.
Given the seriousness of the collision, Circuit Judge Daniel Wren may sentence more or less time in jail, while Oregon sentencing guidelines stipulate a prison term of little more than six years in second-degree manslaughter cases.
A seventh person was pronounced dead on a medivac en route to the hospital, while six others passed away at the spot.
They were named as Josue Garcia-Garcia, 30, Luis Enrique Gomez-Reyes, 30, Alejandro Jimenez Hernandez, 36, Eduardo Lopez-Lopez, 31, Alejandra Espinoza-Carpio, 39, Juan Carlos Leyva-Carrillo, 37, and Gabriel Juarez-Tovilla, 58.
Three more people were hurt.
The van’s driver paused to reposition a trailer that held the farmworkers’ tools after they had just completed harvesting beets and were heading back to their nearby houses.
It was the deadliest collision in Oregon since a bus full of tourists crashed over a railing on Interstate 84 in 2012, killing nine people.
For The Oregonian/OregonLive, Zane Sparling reports on court proceedings and breaking news. You may contact him at [email protected], 503-319-7083, or pdxzane.
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