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Ricardo Tolento, a street racer whose unlawful and unsafe driving directly led to the death of Eugene “Gene” Harbrecht a 67-year-old news editor in Santa Ana five years ago was sentenced by O.C. Superior Court Judge Kimberly Menninger, a former prosecutor, to only nine years in prison on Friday, April 4.
Tolento’s defense attorney, Tom Nocella, a public defender told the court that the other street racer who was arrested in the Harbrecht incident, Louie Robert Villa, was the only one to blame for the crash. Tolento repeatedly denied, during his courtroom testimony, that he was racing Villa.
Tolento testified that he needed to merge since the lane he was in ended on the other side of the intersection and he was worried that Villa wasn’t going to let him over. Tolento was in a lane to the right of Villa at the time. Tolento said he accelerated in order to get ahead of Villa and he claimed that he was already in the process of slowing down when Villa abruptly pulled around him and crashed into Harbrecht’s vehicle, a 2011 Ford Ranger pickup truck…