Left inset: Jessica Valenzuela (GoFundMe). Right inset: Lakeisha Holloway (KSNV/YouTube). Background: The crash scene on the Las Vegas Strip after Lakeisha Holloway plowed into a crowd and killed Jessica Valenzuela, a mother of three from Arizona (KLAS/YouTube).
A woman in Nevada is headed to prison after plowing into a crowd of people walking along the Las Vegas Strip, injuring dozens of them and killing a mother of three who was on an anniversary trip with her husband.
"Where's mommy?" Jessica Valenzuela's daughter, Layla Valenzuela, asked her father after he returned from the 2015 trip without her. The teen described the emotional moment during Lakeisha Holloway's sentencing hearing last week, broadcast by local NBC affiliate KSNV.
Holloway, who was 24 at the time of the crash and has since changed her name to Paris Morton, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon and battery with use of a deadly weapon.
"Where's mommy? Where's mommy?" Layla Valenzuela, who was 8 years old, recalled asking her father, Axel Valenzuela. "I want to see her. Where is she?"
Layla's sister, Giana Valenzuela, was 9 years old when Jessica Valenzuela was killed and described in court how she "never told her goodbye" because they thought their mom was coming right back after the trip.
"I think about that a lot," Giana said.
Prosecutors accused Morton of having a mental breakdown that led to her veering off the road and crashing into 37 people on the Strip, including Jessica Valenzuela, located on a sidewalk along Las Vegas Boulevard in December 2015.
Morton was homeless, out of money, and living in her car with her 3-year-old daughter when the crash happened after traveling to Las Vegas from Oregon, according to prosecutors. She had been staying in parking garages and "kept getting run off by security of the properties," according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press.
"She ended up on the Strip, 'a place she did not want to be,'" the report quoted her as saying, according to AP. While Morton could not explain why she drove onto the sidewalk, she remembered bodies "bouncing off her windshield, breaking it."
Morton's case reportedly dragged on for years due to mental health evaluations and changes in her legal representation, among other issues. She was found not competent to stand trial in 2020 and then deemed competent in 2021 after undergoing a series of evaluations at a state psychiatric facility before pleading guilty in August 2025.
"Your pain, I have never taken for granted," Morton said at her sentencing, while sobbing. "And to see you today, finally, that you get to have this moment after 11 years. For 11 years, I never wanted to say the wrong thing. [No matter] how many sorries, and how much remorse, words are never enough. I feel like saying this statement and reading this statement to you is an injustice in itself. I'm so sorry for your pain."
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