Drunk Driver Who Killed CHP Officer Convicted of Murder

A drunk driver who plowed his car into a group of stranded motorists, killing a California Highway Patrol officer who had come to their rescue, faces life in prison after a Van Nuys jury convicted him Thursday of second-degree murder.

Ramiro Rodriguez, 44, of San Fernando was also found guilty of three other felonies in the 1995 death of Bruce Thomas Hinman, an eight-year CHP officer and father of three.

The California Legislature has named the interchange of the Ventura and Hollywood freeways in Hinman’s memory.

“We were really happy,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig Richman. “It was an important case for us, for the CHP and his widow. Nothing will bring him back, but it’s as close as we can get to making things right.”

One juror said Rodriguez should have known better than to drink and drive.

“You’d have to be from another planet not to know that you shouldn’t drink and drive,” the juror said. “It’s as clear as the sun is hot on certain days and rain is wet.”

Another juror said the convincing evidence showed Rodriguez as unconcerned about drinking and driving.

“For me it was the fact he bought more beer when he was already drunk,” the juror said.

Rodriguez was also convicted of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, driving under the influence causing injury, and driving with a blood-alcohol level in excess of the legal limit of 0.08, causing injury.

Richman said his most difficult task was to prove that Rodriguez knew his conduct was dangerous to life but engaged in it nonetheless.

Dror Toister, Rodriguez’s court-appointed public defender, expressed “deep disappointment with the murder conviction.”

Other drunk driving homicide cases have been different, Toister said.

“In almost all of them, there have been factors such as highly dangerous driving, a history of arrests or convictions for driving under the influence where the defendants received some sort of mandatory drinking drivers education program. This was not one of them,” Toister said.

When Hinman was hit Sept. 26, 1995, friends and colleagues said, he was doing what he did best, helping people. Hinman had stopped to help three people whose car had stalled.

As he tried to push the vehicle to safety, police said, Rodriguez swerved into the car, pinning Hinman underneath. Eleven days later, Hinman died from his injuries.

Fellow officers later donated a monument to Hinman, a concrete bench and marble plaque bearing his name at the CHP’s West Valley station.

In court Thursday, the pain caused by the death was evident as the widow, Kimberlee, wept after the verdicts and tearfully embraced jurors in the hallway. “Thank you, thank you all,” she said.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 6 before Superior Court Judge Darlene Schemp.