Teen Driver Gets Probation For Running Over Two Sisters Playing In A Leaf Pile

An Oregon teenager was put on probation after recently being convicted of felony hit and run after a crash that tragically killed two young stepsisters who were playing in a large pile of leaves near a curb.

After sentencing, Cinthya Garcia-Cisneros, 19, was taken into custody by federal immigration officials for possible deportation.

Behind the wheel of an SUV on the night in question, Cinthya Garcia-Cisneros was returning from a fast-food run with her boyfriend and brother when she drove through a leaf pile reportedly for fun. “Prosecutors said the crash on Oct. 20 in Forest Grove, 25 miles west of Portland, was an accident. But they say the teen failed to come forward after learning she might have struck the children in the leaf pile, which was on the street. Police found her the following day. Authorities said the two little girls — later identified as stepsisters 6-year-old Anna Dieter-Eckerdt and 11-year-old Abigail Robinson — were likely concealed by the leaves and not visible to Garcia-Cisneros.”

The six-year-old died at the scene, while her older stepsister passed a way the following day in Portland hospital.

The teen’s brother returned to the scene that night on his bike where he encountered the girls’ distraught father. He then went back home and told his sister the may have hit the girls but she didn’t turn herself to police. Garcia-Cisneros testified in court that she thought she may have run over a rock.

The girls’ family forgave the teen in open court, which may have influenced the judge not to impose a sentence of up to three years in prison. “Judge [Rick] Knapp said the parents’ wishes weighed most heavily in his decision. Garcia-Cisneros was young, had no criminal history, had not been driving for long and was an ‘exemplary’ community member, he said. There was no question, he said, that this case would haunt her for the rest of her life. ‘The grief in this courtroom is palpable,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to add to it.'”

Knapp sentenced the teen, who apologized to the family during the court proceeding, to three years of probation and 250 hours of community service.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3fdZ5VnTds

Garcia-Cisneros, an undocument immigrant who was brought to this country from Mexico at age four, before this incident qualified for temporary residence in the US under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. She is now subject to deportation as a result of the felony conviction, however.

Under a guilty plea to hindering a prosecution, her boyfriend is serving a 13-month jail term. He eventually told detectives “that he took the SUV to a car wash the day after the crash.”