Credit: Bucks County District Attorney’s Office
A New Jersey woman was sentenced to state prison for a DUI crash that killed three people, including two from the Levittown area.
Priscilla Cortez, 34, of Camden, was sentenced Monday morning to 12 to 24 years in state prison by Bucks County Judge Theodore Frisch. She has been held in the Bucks County Correctional Facility awaiting sentencing.
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In October, Cortez pleaded guilty to three counts each of homicide by vehicle while DUI and homicide by vehicle, along with three counts of drunken driving and several summary traffic offenses.
Cortez was driving a Toyota Sienna when she struck another vehicle on northbound I-95 in Bensalem Township about 1:40 a.m. April 1. She was driving south on northbound I-95 at the time.
Ryan Connell, 28, of Falls Township; Lucas Gelatko, 36, of Lower Makefield; and Leanne Popson, 35, of Middletown Township, were pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said. The three victims all had children.
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Cortez had a strong odor of alcohol on her breath at the scene and admitted to state police that she consumed “a lot” of alcohol before the crash, officials said.
According to court records, Cortez’s blood-alcohol content was found to be 0.156 percent and she had marijuana in her system.
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“My wife and I lost our son who was a father of three small children. They will never get that back. The hope and take here will be of the seriousness of drinking and driving and what could be the outcome when making the wrong decision,” Connell’s father told the court during Monday’s sentencing.
Gelatko’s mother said her son as a “funny, playful person who is dead because a woman decided to drive when she had been drinking.”
“I am devastated. I miss my daughter and only child more and more every day,” Popson’s father said in his impact statement.
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