A Dallas woman was sentenced by a Collin County jury on Friday, September 3, to a four-year prison term after being convicted on intoxication assault and intoxication manslaughter charges in a DWI accident that took the life of a teenage girl in May of last year.

Trial testimony indicated that Maria Rodriguez Martinez, 26, was headed home to Dallas from Plano following a wedding reception shortly after midnight on May 10, 2010. After driving the wrong way for approximately six miles on the Dallas North Tollway, she hit a vehicle coming the other way. The teenage driver of that vehicle died from blunt-force injuries. Her passenger was injured.

The Texas legal limit for drinking and driving is 0.08. Martinez had a blood-alcohol content of .13. She was also seriously hurt in the accident.

The victim's SUV showed a speedometer frozen on impact at 95 miles per hour. Her provisional driver's license disallowed her from driving after midnight without a parent in the vehicle, and she was in violation of juvenile curfews. A state trooper testified at trial that, notwithstanding any of those facts, the crash was Martinez' fault, since she was driving in the wrong direction.

So far in 2010, the North Texas Tollway Authority has confirmed 11 reports of wrong-way drivers on the Dallas North Tollway, none who were involved in crashes. Last year there were at least four fatalities, including the victim in the Martinez crash.

Martinez will be eligible for parole after serving two years of her sentence.

Related Resource: www.dallasnews.com "Dallas woman sentenced to 4 years for DWI crash that killed teen" September 4, 2010