A Texas woman has been sentenced to two years in prison after handing her car keys to her intoxicated 14-year-old son in the early hours of the morning, a decision that ended in the death of a 67-year-old bicyclist.
Erika Martinez-Ramirez was convicted Tuesday of endangering a child by the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office following an incident that occurred on July 14, 2024, in Bellmead, a small city just outside of Waco.
Shortly after 1:30 a.m., Martinez-Ramirez gave her teenage son her keys and instructed him to drive his 10-year-old sister to a nearby house to collect some clothes, despite the boy being years away from legal driving age.
The teenager lost control of the vehicle, striking cyclist Dennis Welch before crashing into a house. Welch was pronounced dead at the scene. The 10-year-old girl in the vehicle sustained minor injuries.
What made the case particularly striking was that this was not the first time Martinez-Ramirez had allowed her unlicensed son to drive. In December 2023, police stopped the boy while he was driving his mother’s car with several other children inside, and Martinez-Ramirez was formally cited for permitting it.
Just two weeks later, he was driving again when he struck another vehicle and fled the scene. Officers contacted Martinez-Ramirez and, according to prosecutors, “repeated to her that allowing her son to drive was unacceptable.” The warnings went unheeded.
Prosecutors explained that they chose not to pursue a manslaughter charge because they lacked sufficient evidence to prove Martinez-Ramirez knew her son was intoxicated at the moment she handed over the keys. Instead, they prosecuted on the child endangerment count, which carries the same maximum penalty as criminally negligent homicide but is easier to establish in court.
Authorities declined to share details about any legal proceedings involving the 14-year-old, citing his age. The case was prosecuted by assistant district attorneys Michaelina Yearty and Duncan Widmann, who said in a joint statement: “Parents are rarely prosecuted for crimes committed by their children, but this mother’s actions were so irresponsible and so frequent that both prosecution and a maximum sentence were warranted.”
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