Port Jervis man pleads guilty to vehicular manslaughter in death of 11-year-old girl

GOSHEN - A Port Jervis man pleaded guilty Friday to vehicular manslaughter in connection with the death of an 11-year-old girl who was a passenger in a car he was driving.

Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler said Yeraldo Roa, 35, of Port Jervis pleaded guilty in County Court to first-degree vehicular manslaughter, a felony.

According to Hoovler, in pleading guilty, Roa admitted that on Sept. 23, 2023, he had a blood alcohol content of 0.2% - more than twice the concentration that constitutes driving while intoxicated - when he drove his car across the double yellow lines on Route 6 in the town of Woodbury.

Roa struck three oncoming vehicles before crashing head-on into a fourth vehicle.

Roa and the 11-year-old girl were taken to Garnet Health Medical Center in the town of Wallkill, where the girl was pronounced dead.

Several injured occupants of the other vehicles were treated at Montefiore St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital in the city of Newburgh.

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Hoovler did not say what relationship, if any, Roa had with the 11-year-old girl.

Roa, who pleaded guilty to the highest count in the indictment against him, is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 20.

"Deaths such as this are as preventable as they are tragic," Hoovler said in a statement released by his office. "This defendant no doubt did not intend to kill his young passenger, but he made a conscious decision to drive knowing that he was severely intoxicated and knowing that it would put the lives of people he knew, and the lives of people he didn't know, at risk."

Roa was represented by the Legal Aid Society of Orange County. A representative of the society could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mike Randall covers breaking news for the Times Herald-Record and the Poughkeepsie Journal. Reach him at mrandall@th-record.com.

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Port Jervis man pleads guilty to vehicular manslaughter in death of 11-year-old girl