OJAI : Woman Sentenced Over Fatal Crash

An Ojai woman was sentenced Friday to a year in the county’s work-furlough program for driving while intoxicated and causing the death of a 20-year-old Oxnard man last August.

Tracey Rene Moore, 22, also was sentenced to five years’ probation, during which she may not drink alcohol. Her driver’s license also was revoked.

Moore could have received five years and eight months in prison, but Ventura County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch apparently agreed with a probation officer’s recommendation that Moore be sentenced to a county facility.

Moore was convicted March 28 in the death of Anthony Tinoco Aug. 11. According to witnesses at her trial, Moore bought beer for a group of friends and they spent the evening at the Lake Casitas campground. While there, they befriended Tinoco and his friends, who also were camping.

About 1 a.m., Moore agreed to take one of her friends home but got lost trying to leave the campground, according to trial testimony. Tinoco and two of his friends jumped into the back of the pickup truck that Moore was driving and offered to show her the way out.

Moore lost control of the truck on a sharp curve and it plunged 80 feet down an embankment, throwing the three men from the back. Tinoco died of massive head injuries and the other passengers were injured.

An expert witness testified that Moore’s blood-alcohol content was between 0.09% and 0.13% at the time of the accident. The legal limit is 0.08%.

In an interview with the probation officer, Moore said she will never drink alcohol again.

“It ruined my whole life,” she said, adding that she had to file for bankruptcy because she could not pay her medical bills or cover her liability for the other victims’ injuries.

“I would exchange my life for his if I could,” she told the interviewer. “But I can’t.”