Raphaela Weinsweig was 26, working as a preschool teacher and hoping to become a nurse, when a Ford F-150 crossed the center line on Woodfield Road in rural Gaithersburg and hit her Jeep head-on. She died more than a month later from injuries doctors said were too severe for her to have a meaningful life. The driver who caused the crash, Jorge Moran Hernandez, had been cited for his eighth DUI less than two months earlier and had already served time for a seventh.
The crash happened on March 15, according to WJLA, when Hernandez was driving northbound on Woodfield Road and Weinsweig was headed southbound on her way to a party with Zack Ugaz. Police said Hernandez crossed the center line and struck her vehicle head-on. Weinsweig, according to police, was not under the influence of alcohol at the time. Hernandez, a father of four from Guatemala, died at the crash site; his blood alcohol concentration was measured at 0.28 percent, according to police, more than three times Maryland’s legal limit of 0.08 percent.
Weinsweig’s mother, Tamar Weinsweig, transferred her daughter to the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore after the crash, but Raphaela suffered severe lacerations of her liver and spleen and died on April 18. WJLA’s reporting notes that Tamar Weinsweig now travels from Poolesville to Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park cemetery three to four times a week.
A History of Warnings Ignored
Hernandez’s record of impaired driving stretched back years before the fatal crash. In February 2023, Maryland State Police found him passed out behind the wheel of a Honda Civic on Rockledge Drive in Montgomery County, according to the same report. His license was suspended at the time, with six prior DUIs and alcohol restrictions already on record, per Maryland State Police. Officers said he had two opened beer cans in the vehicle, failed a field sobriety test, and refused a breathalyzer test…