A motorist pleaded guilty June 10 to gross vehicular manslaughter while under the influence of an unusual drug that resulted in the death of a 9-year-old girl near the San Diego Sports Arena in the Midway area on Dec. 31. Romeo Balbin Dumlao, 34, agreed to accept a stipulated 16-year prison term, said Deputy District Attorney Chris Lawson. Sentencing is set for July 12 by San Diego Superior Court Judge Eugenia Eyherabide. Ashley Heffington was killed in the vehicle collision around 9 a.m. when Dumlao\u2019s vehicle struck the car in which the girl was a passenger. Her mother, Cindy, was stopped at a red light near Sports Arena Boulevard and West Point Loma Boulevard. Lawson said Dumlao was using an inhalant drug in a practice called “huffing.” He said Dumlao had inhaled computer keyboard cleaner from a can with compressed air, and that Dumlao\u2019s case is the first in San Diego in which someone has been prosecuted for “huffing” in a DUI case. “It is a drug,” said Lawson, who added the practice appears to be rare. The girl died about 12 days after the accident and charges were not filed until May because Dumlao\u2019s case involved specialized laboratory tests that took months to complete, Lawson said. Dumlao was arrested May 1 at his Chula Vista home by San Diego police. He also pled guilty to injuring Cindy Heffington and a second passenger. Dumlao accepted the plea deal and averted the need for a preliminary hearing June 14. He remains in custody on $250,000 bail.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A motorist pleaded guilty June 10 to gross vehicular manslaughter while under the influence of an unusual drug that resulted in the death of a 9-year-old girl near the San Diego Sports Arena in the Midway area on Dec. 31. Romeo Balbin Dumlao, 34, agreed to accept a stipulated 16-year prison term, said Deputy District […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"Motorist pleads guilty in traffic death of girl, 9","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11593,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-no-images","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303225","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=303225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}