DUI Driver Gets Prison in Deadly Wrong-Way Crash

April Thompson's adoptive mother described a childhood of neglect and behavioral issues as she pleaded for probation

A National City woman will go to prison for getting behind the wheel of a car with three times the legal limit of alcohol in her system and killing a man in a wrong-way highway collision.

April Thompson, 23, was behind the wheel of a white pickup truck around 1 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 29 and traveling the wrong way on State Route 52 when she struck a VW Beetle driven by Jayme Midlam of Santee.

Midlam, 25, was pronounced dead at the scene.

His mother, Karen Lennon, spoke at Thompson’s sentencing hearing Tuesday and asked the court to hand down the maximum sentence.

“Jayme was and always will be my heart, my soul, my lock,” she said. “I’m depleted, grieving and miss my loving son with every fiber of my being.”

Thompson pleaded guilty in June to charges of gross vehicular manslaughter and several other charges.

When it came time to speak to the court, Thompson said she was more than sorry.

“My heart breaks every day because I can’t take that day back as much as I wish and want to,” she told Midlam’s family in court.

Wearing her hair in braided pigtails, Thompson sobbed during the hearing in which the judge debated probation or prison time.

The defendant’s adoptive mother Janet Cowan spoke on her behalf describing how Thompson suffered neglect and sexual abuse by the time she was adopted at the age of 7.

Thompson had her hands, feet and mouth duct-taped for periods of time, Cowan said.

“She had already lived through more horror than most people will ever live through their whole life,” she said.

Cowan also described a number of afflictions Thompson has lived with including OCD, ADD, self-injury, bulima, learning disabilities and attachment issues.

However, Judge Dan Goldstein said Thompson’s decision to get into what he described as a “two-ton bullet” and kill someone outweighed those issues.

“Due to her conduct, not her intent, not her lifetime of horror, due to her conduct at a particular moment of time, on a particular evening in San Diego County, she killed somebody. And that makes it a prison sentence for me,” Goldstein said.

Thompson was sentenced to six years in prison. Prosecutors said she will likely serve approximately half the prison sentence. 

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