A judge sentenced a woman to 10 years in prison for a deadly drunk driving crash in El Dorado County in which she failed to tell authorities about her boyfriend, a passenger ejected from the vehicle and found dead by a passerby the following afternoon along the highway.
Erica Lynn Chambers, 37, of Placerville, on Aug. 23 pleaded no contest to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, hit-and-run and driving under the influence causing injury for the crash that killed her passenger and boyfriend, 34-year-old Mason Visman of Camino.
El Dorado Superior Court Judge Mark Ralphs sentenced Chambers on Oct. 4, the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office announced Thursday in a news release.
Court records show Chambers is scheduled to return to court Nov. 22 for a restitution hearing. On Friday, she remained in custody at the El Dorado County Jail.
The crash involving a 2018 Mercedes-Benz and a 2008 Toyota Prius was reported about 7:45 p.m. on Nov. 11, 2022, along the westbound lanes of Highway 50, just west of Mosquito Road, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Prosecutors said Chambers and her boyfriend had just attended a family wedding, and Chambers was driving the Mercedes sport utility vehicle at a high rate of speed.
The Mercedes struck the rear end of the Toyota Prius before crashing into a guardrail, according to the District Attorney’s Office. Visman was ejected from the SUV through an open window and killed instantly.
The CHP said officers arrived and discovered that the Mercedes driver, later identified as Chambers, had left the scene.
Prosecutors said witnesses reported Chambers trying to drive away, but the heavily damaged SUV only got several hundred yards away from the site before she got out of the vehicle and collapsed.
The CHP, with help from the Placerville Police Department, apprehended Chambers moments later near the crash scene. Investigators determined she had been driving under the influence of alcohol, the CHP said.
A 35-year-old Shingle Springs man was the sole occupant of the Toyota Prius involved in the crash. He suffered minor injuries, the CHP said.
Chambers did not tell the officers she had a passenger with her in the Mercedes during the crash, the CHP said. She was arrested and booked at the jail that same night.
Shortly after 3 p.m. the following day, CHP officers were called to an area near Highway 50 and Mosquito Road for a report of a possible body found in the bushes on the other side of a guardrail. A passerby had spotted the body.
Officers arrived and found the body of a man later identified as Visman by the El Dorado County Coroner’s Office.
The CHP said nobody involved in the crash or witnesses reported a possible passenger in the Mercedes.
“Additionally, at the scene, the investigating officer specifically asked Chambers if she was driving alone, and she indicated she was,” the CHP has said in the news release.
Chambers was then re-arrested on the vehicular manslaughter charge in Visman’s death.
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