New Twists And Turns In Fatal Hutchinson County Accident

A couple of days ago, we heard about an accident that happened in Hutchinson County that sadly left one person dead from the accident.

There was an arrest made, charges were drawn up, and the process began.

Any time there's an investigation that's ongoing, there's the possibility of something new popping up, and in this particular case, we have just that. In fact, the change was so big that it resulted in the charges against the man being completely changed.

Oliverio Angel Perez-Matul was the driver of the car that hit another car resulting in the death of Bryndan Grogan of Fritch. After the accident, Perez-Matul was arrested and taken in for booking. His charges were:

You can see he was initially hit with five different charges, including vehicular manslaughter and intoxication assault with a vehicle. Something is about to change.

As police continue investigating the accident, they find out that there was a stop sign that was at the intersection where the accident occurred. At the time of the accident however, the stop sign wasn't there.

Why it wasn't there isn't clear, it's possible someone removed the stop sign for one reason or another. While it doesn't change the fact that Perez-Matul was allegedly driving drunk, it DOES change the circumstances of the accident.

As far as not stopping at the intersection, he was in the right at the time since there wasn't a stop sign. If you're not looking for it, chances are you aren't stopping, sometimes even if you knew there used to be one there. It's possible he was unfamiliar with the area and where stop signs typically are.

With this discovery, the charges against Perez-Matul ended up being changed, and pretty dramatically.

As you'll see, the vehicular manslaughter charge is now gone and the accident involving death charge remains. So how does this change things?

The vehicular manslaughter charge carries a potential sentence of 2 to 20 years in prison along with a fine of up to $10,000. The accident involving death charge could result in a sentence of 2 to 10 years and the same fine.

So with that charge being dropped, it takes away potentially 20 years in prison and leaves the lesser charge and smaller sentence on the table.

Also, you may have noticed the intoxication assault with a vehicle charge was dropped as well. That could've sentenced Perez-Matul to another 2 to 10 years in prison, up to $10,000 in fines, as well as suspension of his drivers license for anywhere between 180 days to 2 years.

To recap, that's 4 to 30 years, up to $20,000 in fines, and a drivers license suspension that has been avoided by Perez-Matul because the stop sign was missing. That's a dramatic turn of events in this case.

As far as the missing stop sign at the intersection goes, it is now back in place so we should (hopefully) avoid seeing something like this in the future.