Driver who killed West Windsor soccer mom gets 4 years
WEST WINDSOR » The reckless driver who killed beloved township resident Ruby Chiang in a July 2015 two-vehicle crash pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and is serving hard time in state prison.
Michael Martinez, 21, of West Windsor, was sentenced to four years of state incarceration earlier this summer after admitting he recklessly operated a motor vehicle and caused Chiang’s death.
The crash occurred about 9:30 a.m. Sunday, July 26, 2015, when Martinez was speeding westbound on Princeton-Hightstown Road and slammed his Toyota into the passenger’s side of an Acura that was traveling eastbound and turning left into the entrance of Community Park at Slayback Drive.
Chiang, 43, a married mother of two and a passenger in the vehicle, was rushed to Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton and died two days later from her life-threatening injuries.
A grand jury handed up an indictment Jan. 15, 2016, charging Martinez with one count of second-degree death by auto, also known as vehicular homicide. He pleaded guilty in December 2017 and got sentenced in July to four years of state incarceration, court records show.
About two years after killing Chiang in the vehicular homicide, Martinez abused his pretrial release by committing a brazen robbery in Berkeley Township in Ocean County on Sept. 8, 2017. He later pleaded guilty to second-degree robbery and received a four-year prison sentence, which runs concurrent to his four-year death by auto prison sentence, according to court documents.
West Windsor Township hosted a dedication ceremony honoring the memory of Chiang at the softball field in West Windsor Community Park on July 30, 2016, approximately one year after her tragic death.
“Ruby was very much involved as both a softball coach and a soccer parent touching the lives of many young athletes along the way,” the township said in a July 2016 press release, adding the Ruby Shiau Chiang Memorial Field dedication provides “an opportunity for family, friends, and the young athletes she coached to remember with fondness, the very special person Ruby was.”
Chiang’s family established a fund three years ago to honor her memory, according to RememberingRubyChiang.com. The Ruby Shiau Chiang Fund has awarded scholarships to West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District students and raised significant funds to support the renovation and dedication of Ruby Shiau Chiang Memorial Field at West Windsor Community Park.
“Ruby was known to family and friends as a caring person who was fun and always helpful,” reads a statement on the website dedicated in her memory. “She appreciated very much the bonds that she had with her family and her friends and was a source of inspiration in the way that she lived her life. She also adored the children in the West Windsor community. She was very involved in youth sports and imparted her own love of sports not only to her kids but also to those whom she coached on her West Windsor Ninja softball teams.”
Martinez, who was 18 when he recklessly killed Chiang in a crash that occurred near his Princeton-Hightstown Road residence, spent 90 days in jail from Sept. 9, 2017, through Dec. 7, 2017, before Ocean County Superior Court Judge James M. Blaney sentenced him June 8 in the robbery case, court records show.
Mercer County Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw sentenced Martinez in the vehicular homicide case July 6. Martinez, who was represented by defense attorney Steven D. Altman, struck a plea deal calling for him to serve five years in state prison under the No Early Release Act requiring him to serve 85 percent of the sentence behind bars before becoming eligible for parole.
But Martinez’s plea deal featured a leniency clause resulting in his recommended five-year prison sentence in the death by auto case getting downward adjusted to four years of incarceration to run concurrent to his Ocean County sentence “so that his sentence does not cause any additional period of incarceration,” according to a copy of the plea agreement obtained by The Trentonian.
The leniency clause, in effect, allowed Martinez to be sentenced as if he had committed a third-degree crime despite confessing to a second-degree offense that typically results in five to 10 years in the slammer.
“To be fair and in the interests of justice,” Warshaw wrote in his judgment of conviction, “the Court will impose the recommended sentence in accordance with the plea agreement.”
The Ocean County judge went easy on Martinez in the second-degree robbery case. “Based upon the defendant’s age and background,” Blaney wrote in his judgment of conviction, “the Court recommends that he be processed as a youthful offender.”
Martinez is currently incarcerated at the Mountainview Youth Correctional Facility in Hunterdon County. He is scheduled to be released Aug. 1, 2021, according to the New Jersey Department of Corrections. He will be subjected to three years of parole supervision after serving his time behind bars.