Driver Convicted in Fatal Crash Walks Free After Sentencing
A Hattieville truck driver found guilty by a jury of causing a fatal 2023 highway crash will not serve any additional prison time. High Court Justice Derick Sylvester cited the hardship a jail sentence would cause the man’s young children, including a disabled five-year-old daughter, in handing down the ruling.
Marvin Cal, 29, had pleaded not guilty to causing the death of Oscar Rodas and took his case to trial instead of accepting a plea deal. The jury found him guilty regardless.
The crash unfolded on June 12, 2023, on the Hattieville-Burrell Boom Road when Cal’s white Ford Ranger pulled out from behind a bus to overtake it. The truck hit loose gravel and spun out of control before slamming into another vehicle and tangling with a trailer it was towing. Cal became trapped behind the steering wheel after the dashboard crushed into his lap, and firefighters had to cut him free with hydraulic tools. Rodas, riding in Cal’s truck at the time, did not survive.
Cal maintained throughout the trial that he hadn’t been driving at all. He told the court he was sitting in the passenger seat, that nobody asked for identification at the crash scene or later at the hospital, and that the police didn’t contact him until roughly a year afterwards. His lawyers argued the prosecution’s version of events strained belief. The jury rejected that defence and convicted him as the driver.
Rosa Reyes, who shared eight years with Oscar Rodas before his death, described a loss that arrived all at once and reshaped her entire life. She was three months pregnant when Rodas died, and the shock of the news led to a miscarriage two days later, followed by a hospital stay for heavy bleeding. Her teenage daughter had to leave school to help support the household once Rodas’s income disappeared. Reyes remembered him as the kind of man who’d stop on the road to help a stranger with a flat tyre or a dead battery, no questions asked. What remains, she said, is a void that touches every corner of her life: emotional, financial, and personal.
On the other side of the case, Cal’s family spoke of a different but no less painful kind of loss. His common-law wife, Catalina Cal, told the court their two young children, including their disabled daughter, cry every night asking where their father is. With Cal in custody, the family has had no income, and Catalina said she’s been struggling to figure out how they’ll cover school costs for their son, who starts classes in September. She described her partner as a devoted, hard-working family man, not the kind of person she sees as a criminal.
A court-ordered background report filled in more of Cal’s history. Raised in poverty as one of thirteen children, he left school early to help support his siblings before eventually settling into five years of steady work at a Hattieville trucking company. Investigators found nothing suggesting he posed a danger to others or was likely to reoffend. The report also flagged that Cal’s employer provides his family’s housing, raising the possibility that a long prison term could leave his children without a roof over their heads as well as without their father.
When it came time to sentence Cal, Justice Sylvester started from the standard six-month benchmark for this type of offence. He brought that down to four months after weighing two factors: Cal and Rodas had been close coworkers travelling together when the crash happened, and Cal himself had been hospitalised with injuries from the collision. Because Cal never pleaded guilty, none of the usual plea discounts applied. Counting the 47 days Cal had already spent behind bars, the judge determined that was enough and ordered his release. He also declined to suspend Cal’s driver’s licence, pointing out that his livelihood depends on being able to drive.
As part of the sentence, Cal must pay Rosa Reyes five thousand dollars in compensation through monthly instalments of three hundred dollars, beginning in July. Missing a single payment triggers the full amount immediately, along with a six-month prison sentence.