Inset: Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, Matilde Moncado Ramos Pinto, and their 2 children (KGO). Background: The scene of the collision that left the family dead (KGO).
An elderly woman from California, aged 80, will not face incarceration after a tragic incident where she drove into a family of four at a bus stop during their outing to the zoo. This decision was reached by a judge on Friday.
Mary Fong Lau entered a no contest plea last month to four counts of vehicular manslaughter. The victims, 40-year-old Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, his 38-year-old wife Matilde Moncado Ramos Pinto, and their two young children—a baby and a toddler—lost their lives in the incident. On Friday, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Bruce Chan sentenced Lau to two years of probation and revoked her driving privileges for three years.
Judge Chan cited Lau’s advanced age, her clean criminal record, and her evident remorse as influencing factors in the decision, according to KRON, a CW affiliate. However, the victims’ relatives expressed disappointment, advocating for a stricter penalty given Lau’s excessive speed of 70 mph in a residential area.
“Diego and his family were simply heading to the zoo on a Sunday morning to celebrate their anniversary,” shared Oliveira’s sister with KRON. “The penalty she received doesn’t reflect the magnitude of the tragedy.”
In a poignant victim impact statement, Pinto’s brother conveyed the deep loss: “She was denied the right to continue being a mother — something she had looked forward to all her life,” he wrote.
“She was denied the right to continue being a mother — something she had looked forward to all her life,” he reportedly wrote.
As Law&Crime previously reported, the victims on March 16, 2024, were waiting at a bus stop near the West Portal Muni station on their way to the zoo when Lau, driving her Mercedes SUV at about 70 mph, struck and killed all four family members.
In the immediate aftermath of the crash, Lau told an eyewitness that she had attempted to hit the brakes on her vehicle, but “accidentally moved her foot onto the gas pedal,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing court documents.
However, in an interview with police conducted at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, Lau reportedly said she was driving food over to her brother’s house when there was a sudden “malfunction with the vehicle which caused the vehicle to suddenly accelerate at a high rate of speed.” She further asserted to authorities that she “tried to brake and put the car into park but was unsuccessful in slowing the vehicle down.”
The victims’ family has been ardently opposed to reduced charges for Lau, with Ramos Pinto’s brother told local ABC affiliate KGO that his sister and her family were not the only ones to die that day, saying “part of us all died.”
“We’re vehemently against them, because no evidence has been provided that would suggest this isn’t gross negligence,” Ramos Pinto told KGO. “I would like to see this person tried and suffer, be held accountable and responsible for her actions.”
The victims’ families have also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Lau, which is currently being litigated in civil court. They are represented in the matter by attorney Jim Quadra.
In the wrongful death case, the victims’ family members have accused Lau of concealing her assets to prevent them from being included in any possible settlement or adverse judgment, local Fox affiliate KTVU reported.
