A 92-year-old woman has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in the 2014 death of Melissa Bonney Ratcliff, fatally injured when the older woman backed out of a parking spot on Girard Avenue in La Jolla. Mary O\u2019Neill agreed to a settlement of $775,000 to Ratcliff\u2019s three children, all under 12 at the time, according to civil court records. Ratcliff, 45, was doing errands on Oct. 7, 2014 and was standing by her car when O\u2019Neill put her car in reverse and quickly backed out of a parking space. Ratcliff, of La Jolla, suffered head and torso injuries and died the same day. O’Neill told police she did not look in her rear-view mirror before she pulled out. Ratcliff, former deputy communications director for Vice President Al Gore, was vice president of marketing and events for the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. O\u2019Neill entered the guilty plea through her attorney on Feb. 9 before San Diego Superior Court Judge Lisa Rodriguez, who sentenced her to one year probation. No jail time was ordered. O’Neill has moved to a senior assisted-care facility in Louisville, Kentucky and did not appear in court. People accused of misdemeanors do not have to personally appear in court unless a judge orders them to do so. Rodriguez ordered the forfeiture of O\u2019Neill\u2019s driver\u2019s license and a $249 fine. The case was filed by City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, who said he wanted to get restitution for the family and the forfeit of her driver\u2019s license. The civil settlement funds came from $100,000 from O\u2019Neill\u2019s car insurance company and $675,000 from the sale of O\u2019Neill\u2019s condominium, her attorney said in court documents. O\u2019Neill, a widow, could have declared bankruptcy and not sold her home, but she felt the Ratcliff children deserved to be compensated for the loss of their mother, wrote attorney Scott Schabacker. Schabacker wrote that there was nothing wrong with the car and that O\u2019Neill did not have an inability to drive correctly. She passed a driver\u2019s test when she was 90 years old. The children are living with their father. \u2013 Neal Putnam<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 92-year-old woman has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in the 2014 death of Melissa Bonney Ratcliff, fatally injured when the older woman backed out of a parking spot on Girard Avenue in La Jolla. Mary O\u2019Neill agreed to a settlement of $775,000 to Ratcliff\u2019s three children, all under 12 at the time, according […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":274082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"$775,000 settlement reached in Melissa Ratcliff auto death","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}