NY woman who fatally ran over mom who was mourning her slain daughter at memorial pleads guilty
NY Post
The Long Island woman who fatally ran over a mom mourning the slaying of her daughter by MS-13 gang members accepted a plea deal Friday — seven months after a judge declared a second mistrial in the drawn-out case.
Ann Marie Drago, 63, pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide in the 2018 death of 50-year-old Evelyn Rodriguez at a Brentwood memorial for her murdered teen daughter, Kayla Cuevas.
Drago is expected to receive a sentence of five years of probation, but prosecutors will be asking that she spend one to three years in prison.
“Evelyn Rodriguez was still mourning the loss of her daughter when this defendant dismantled her daughter’s memorial, and then struck the victim with her vehicle, ultimately causing her death,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said in a statement.
The plea agreement comes after prosecutors had to hurdle several mistrials, including after Drago was convicted in March 2020 and sentenced to nine months in jail — only for the case to be tossed by an appeals court, which cited prosecutorial misconduct during the jury trial.
Suffolk County prosecutors decided to retry the case last year — but that too ended in a mistrial after jurors were deadlocked on whether to convict Drago on the top count of negligent homicide.
