In sunny suburb, nanny's murder trial opens on tale of tragedy
By Harriet Ryan
Court TV
MARTINEZ, California (Court TV) -- The residents of Danville, an upscale suburb of perennially foggy San Francisco, like to boast that in their small city the sun shines 300 days a year.
Even one of the darkest incidents in the recent history of the town occurred at the close of a brilliant Indian summer day. On that evening a year and a half ago, a nanny named Jimena Barreto, allegedly drunk and high on drugs, ran off a residential thoroughfare in her Mercedes Benz, striking a group of children on bikes and scooters, and killing a young brother and sister.
The deaths of Alana Pack, 7, and her brother, Troy, 10, stunned many of Danville's 43,000 inhabitants, who thought of their community of million-dollar homes and well-regarded schools as insulated from random tragedy.
On Monday, Barreto's murder trial began in a courtroom packed with Danville parents. The women, wearing brightly colored sweaters and expensive jewelry, and the men, in sports jackets and khakis, wiped away tears as they listened to witnesses, including the victims' mother, describe the crash as the ultimate suburban nightmare.
"I held her and I asked if she was OK, and her eyes were open but she didn't answer," Carmen Pack testified about cradling her dying daughter after the October 26, 2003, crash.
Pack, 43, is three months' pregnant with twins she and her husband, Bob, began trying to conceive after the crash. Although she was not asked about the pregnancy, a black-and-white maternity blouse made her condition obvious. At the request of her obstetrician, a paramedic waited outside the courtroom while she testified.
Asked by a prosecutor to identify the driver of the car that killed her only children, Pack, who was a beauty queen in her native Peru, glared toward the defense table. Jabbing a finger in the direction of Barreto, whose brown hair had fallen over her face, Pack said with obvious disgust, "That woman over there."
As she did throughout much of the proceeding, Barreto cried into a tissue. Her lawyer said outside court that she is being heavily medicated by jail doctors for depression.
Barreto once had a thriving career as a nanny and specialized in the care of twins and triplets. Her clients included Ethel Kennedy, her lawyer said.
The attorney, Craig Wormley, told jurors she had grown up the youngest of six children in a village in Colombia and had come to America seeking "her American dream."
"All of her good deeds in the past have been erased in the blink of an eye," he said during his opening statement.
Wormley argued the crash was simply an accident and intimated that there was community pressure to make it into a crime. Carmen and Bob Pack urged prosecutors to file murder charges in addition to the original manslaughter counts.
In his own opening statement, prosecutor Paul Sequiera painted Barreto as a ticking bomb. Noting that she had three prior drunk driving convictions, he said she had been on course to kill someone for years.
"The story's end was predictable, the only question being who would win this catastrophic fatal lottery," he said.
The case turns on whether the prosecution can establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Barreto was under the influence of alcohol, prescription pain killers or both. She fled the scene before toxicology tests could be administered.
"All of the evidence is consistent with being under the influence of drugs and alcohol her behavior before the accident, her behavior after the accident and her driving," Sequiera told jurors in his opening statement.
Witnesses who testified Monday said she was driving erratically before the crash and showed no concern for the victims afterwards.
Barreto's lawyer acknowledged that his client used Vicodin, a powerful painkiller, for knee and back ailments, but said she did not abuse it and that prosecutors were missing "a crucial piece of evidence."
"That's a positive toxicology report proving that my client was under the influence of anything," he said.
If convicted, Barreto, 46, faces 30 years to life in prison.
