A Minnesota woman was killed by a negligent driver, but instead of closure, her mother says Hennepin County’s so-called justice system has made the family’s nightmare even worse.
Mary Restrepo joined Liz Collin on her podcast to talk about what happened to her daughter and how the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office has handled the case.
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Mary explained how her daughter, Cristina Restrepo, died just days after her 40th birthday in 2023. Cristina’s car was barely moving at the time when the driver of a box truck slammed into her at 60 miles an hour. She is survived by her son, who was 12 years old at the time.
The crash
She was driving a Nissan Altima and her car was reduced to about half the size of what it was, Mary Restrepo explained.
“Cristina had been rear-ended by a driver who was driving a box truck and he hit her at a high level of velocity and it was captured on video, both by the camera on the road and the interview was recorded by the officers on site, wherein they told us very clearly that he hit her, his brake lights only came on a fraction of a second prior to impact,” Mary explained.
Cristina died a short time later at North Memorial from blunt force trauma caused by the crash.
As for the driver, Mary explained that, “He admitted on site that he had a YouTube video running and he was trying to change the clock on his truck. So he did not see that traffic was slowed way down in front of him and he did not brake and both the right lane and the left lane were open. He could have avoided the crash had he been paying attention.”
Mary also said that one of the law enforcement officers told her “you have to accept the fact that this man may never see punishment because this happened in Hennepin County and Hennepin County does not hold people accountable for their crimes.”
‘Justice’ took 33 months
It took nearly a year for criminal charges to be filed against the driver, Pheng Yang of Brooklyn Park.
Yang was charged with criminal vehicular homicide, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, but as Mary explained, he will likely now end up with just a couple of months in the workhouse after the family believes the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, under Mary Moriarty, never wanted to take the case to trial.
“The attorney requested continuance after continuance … Every delay cost us about four months of an extension. The hardest part for me was mentally and emotionally getting prepared again and again to go to trial,” Mary Restrepo said.
“They told us how gruesome the autopsy report was and what people were going to say and we didn’t need to be present during that part. But it was getting ready to face this man, knowing well what he did and how he has destroyed our family … all due to careless behavior,” she explained.
Mary also spoke to Collin about how the prosecution ultimately “presented a plea without ever involving the family.”
Yang will be formally sentenced in April
“He faces … 60 to 180 days incarceration at the workhouse with furloughs for work, five years adjudication … which means if he behaves, the felony would no longer be on his record,” Mary said.
She also pointed out how the driver “totally recanted everything that was said and videotaped at the scene of the accident” during the plea hearing.
“He stated that his phone was black. He did not have a video on, he was not trying to change his clock, he only glanced down at his phone to see what time it was. So totally changed his story 100%,” Mary said.
Alpha News asked the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office for comment but did not receive a response.
In trying to get some justice for her family, Mary said that, “I asked at one point to have him [my grandson] sit down in front of Mary Moriarty and have her look him in the face, in the eyes and tell her [to] tell my grandson that his mother wasn’t worth more than a couple months in the workhouse.”
“It’s horrific. Her life had no value in their mind … they just wanted the case off the table and didn’t really care whether this man was expected to be accountable for the crime or not,” Mary said.
“Clearing cases is more important, it appears, than anything else. The justice isn’t there. The state guidelines for sentencing are ridiculous,” she said.
A fund has been set up to help Cristina’s son in the future.
Liz Collin
Liz Collin is a multi-Emmy-Award-winning investigative reporter, news anchor, and producer who cares about Minnesota. She is the producer of The Fall of Minneapolis and Minnesota v We the People documentary films, and author of the Amazon best-selling book, They’re Lying: The Media, the Left, and The Death of George Floyd. Her work has prompted important state laws. Yet perhaps most of all, Liz has been giving a voice to the truth—and helping others tell their stories—for more than 20 years.
Dr. JC Chaix
Dr. JC Chaix is an editor, educator, and an expert in media studies. He wrote and directed the Alpha News documentary “The Fall of Minneapolis” and “Minnesota v We the People.”
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