Elderly woman avoids jail after running over family of 4

[Basman]

https://nypost.com/2026/02/14/us-news/elderly-calif-woman-who-fatally-ran-down-family-of-4-likely-to-avoid-prison-stint/

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An elderly San Francisco woman who fatally ran down an Apple executive and his family with her Mercedes is likely to dodge jail time — leaving relatives of the victims appalled.

Mary Fong Lau, 80, was charged after she plowed into Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, his wife Matilde Ramos and their two children, Joaquim and Cauê in March 2024 — killing the entire family and injuring others.

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While Judge Bruce Chan acknowledged the tragedy was ‘incomprehensible,’ he noted that giving Lau a prison stint would be ‘sentencing her to die within the state prison system.”

“Mrs. Lau is going to spend the rest of her days living with the knowledge of the harm she has caused to others,” Chan said in court.

Lau’s husband died in a car crash years ago, which also factored into the court’s leniency. The judge also said Lau cried at the hospital when she learned the family had died, telling medical staff she wished she could have traded places with them, according to the Chronicle.

She was also apparently moving assets to avoid having to pay the victims

https://www.ktvu.com/news/woman-accused-wiping-out-entire-family-san-francisco-crash-likely-wont-get-prison-time

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Last spring, Lau was accused in a civil lawsuit of fraudulently transferring her interests in San Francisco real estate in an effort to evade financial responsibility to the relatives of the crash victims.

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To me, what's interesting here isn't so much the lenient sentencing in of itself (though I personally find it grossly lenient), but how this kind of leniency erodes trust in the justice system. The public reaction is simply put appalled by the direction of the sentencing. It feeds into a narrative that the justice system is too lenient on serious crime, especially if you have money. It makes the institution as a whole feel unserious. For example the case with Anders Breivik, who arguably should've just gotten the death penalty. It would make the justice system appear more serious about serious crime to the public. Instead they are playing this game of perpetually extending his sentence since you don't formally have life imprisonment in Norway.