Inset: Sunshine Perez (Broward County Jail). Background: The smashed front end of a Honda Civic after Perez crashed into it on the Turnpike in Miramar, Fla. (WTVJ).
A Florida woman will spend two decades behind bars for killing a paramedic when she drove the wrong way down a highway and slammed her SUV into the victim's Honda Civic.
Sunshine Perez, 46, pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide in the death of 23-year-old Ezekiel Urrutia. A judge on Friday sentenced her to 20 years in prison.
The incident occurred shortly before 2 a.m. Jan. 9, 2025, on Florida's Turnpike in Miramar. Perez drove south in the northbound lanes for at least 2 miles when she struck Urrutia's car head-on.
Paramedics pronounced Urrutia dead on scene. Authorities said her blood-alcohol level was nearly twice the legal limit. Cops noted her eyes were bloodshot and she smelled of alcohol. She also had THC, methamphetamine and oxycodone in her system.
But Perez claimed the toxicology report was wrong.
"I was working, and when I got off of work, I went to one of my friends' house, I had a drink, and I said my back was hurting, and I took what I thought was medication," she said, according to a courtroom report from local NBC affiliate WTVJ. "Then I later found out in a toxicology report that there were things in my system that I do not do."
While sobbing through her statement to the court, she poked fun of her first name and apologized to the victim's family.
"Again, I struggle with knowing that my two hands caused so much trouble to a family. I mean, come on with a name like Sunshine, you expect that to be a happy, bubbly person which I typically am, but now it's like a rain cloud over this family and anyone who knew him," Perez said, per CBS affiliate WFOR.
Urrutia's family said he was set to be hired as a paramedic for the City of Miami at the time of his death.
"In a single moment, Sunshine Perez put an end to everything," his father Frank Urrutia told the court. "Absolutely no words can describe when two Florida Highway Patrol detectives came to our front door."
The victim's mother, Tiffany Urrutia, spoke about all the milestones she will miss with her son.
"I was supposed to watch my child grow up," she said. "I was supposed to hold his children and spoil them and watch the life that he worked hard to build. Instead, I watched the news and his body in a bag next to his car."