A group of four Elk Grove police officers testified in court about a crash scene that included a badly damaged motorcycle, a motorcyclist lying face down in tree foliage, an Acura crashed through a metal sound wall, and a driver stumbling away from the scene.

The officers described those sights in the Dec. 18 preliminary hearing of Rebecca Vela, a 33-year-old Sacramento woman accused of driving drunk and fatally rear-ending a motorcyclist near Elk Grove Park last spring.

The motorcyclist, 54-year-old Stanley Franklin Spaeth of Sacramento, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Following the testimony, Sacramento Superior Court Judge James L. Long said there appeared to be enough evidence to prove Vela was guilty, and ordered her to stand trial.  She will be arraigned Dec. 31 at the Sacramento County Main Jail.

Elk Grove Police Officer Lance McDaniel said he happened upon the crash site on his way to work on the evening of April 18. During his testimony, he said he must have arrived just moments after the crash.

“People were still exiting their cars (and) walking up toward the scene,” McDaniel said.

He said he saw Spaeth “tangled up in the (downed) tree.” As he described what he said was the most severely injured body he had ever witnessed at a crash scene, a girl in the courtroom audience cried.

After the hearing, a woman who identified herself as Spaeth’s wife said a small group of relatives and friends would decline to comment for this story.

Sacramento County Deputy District Attorney Leland Washington also declined to comment.

Elk Grove Police Det. Chad Bluette, who was called to the scene to investigate the accident, said Vela had been driving north between the northbound and southbound lanes of East Stockton Boulevard, then swerved back into the correct lane and rear-ended Spaeth’s motorcycle.

The motorcycle became lodged under Vela’s Acura for a short time, Bluette said, testifying the car then swerved to the right and crashed through a metal sound wall near Teresa Way.

Police say Vela

appeared drunk, did poorly on sobriety tests

McDaniel testified he saw Vela “briskly stumbling” away from the scene, and said she appeared drunk and “very unconcerned with what had just happened.”

“She made weird comments like, ‘It’s OK, I have it under control,’” he said.

Elk Grove Police Officer Casey Robinson said Vela told him she’d had about one glass of wine.

He administered several field sobriety tests on Vela, and said she did “poorly” on all of them. Vela refused a breathalyzer test and had a blood sobriety test performed at the Elk Grove police station, Robinson said.

Robinson said he had to repeat several of the questions and instructions to Vela at the scene.

After the hearing, Vela’s attorney said that was because she “wasn’t cognizant of what was going on.”

Attorney Russell Miller said he has reason to believe Vela has a “particular brain disorder” related to blackout drinking.

“She doesn’t remember anything about the accident at all,” Miller said. “The first thing she remembers was (being) at the police station.”

He said Vela knows what she did was wrong.

“She knows that she needs to be punished,” Miller said. “She just wants people to understand what was happening to her.”

According to an amended complaint filed by the district attorney’s office, Vela has four prior DUI convictions, not three, as was previously reported: in 1994, 1995, 1996 and 2000. She also reportedly has a prior conviction for assault with a deadly weapon.

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