Angelica Dhondup Utah bride killed in wrong way crash on wedding night. Wrong way DUI driver, Manaure Gonzalez-Rea arrested as he tried to flee scene.
A suspected DUI driver has been arrested in a wrong-way crash in Utah that killed a newly married bride on her way home from her wedding, police said.
Manaure Gonzalez-Rea, 36, allegedly crashed head-on into 26-year-old Angelica Gabrielle Jimenez Dhondup’s vehicle near Salt Lake City in the early hours of Saturday.
Dhondup was driving home from her reception at the time, according to Utah’s Department of Public Safety.
Her new husband, who was Dhondup’s high school sweetheart, was not in the car at the time.
A 20-year-old woman who was a passenger in the bride’s car was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The passenger was identified as the victim’s cousin.
Police say Gonzalez-Rea was traveling the wrong way down Interstate 15 in a Toyota pickup truck when he crashed into Angelica Dhondup‘s Corolla vehicle.
Gonzalez-Rea’s car flipped and landed on its roof in the crash.
Photos from the crash site show the driver’s side of Dhondup’s car totaled and multiple beer cans strewn across the highway.
It was not immediately clear which vehicle the beer cans came from.
Also not clear is if the newly married bride and her cousin were wearing seatbelts.
Police say Gonzalez-Rea fled after stealing the truck of a witness who had stopped to help.
He was stopped farther up the highway and arrested by a trooper.
Last desperate phone call
Of note, the bride made a last call to her sister after the accident, around 1am.
‘She called her and told her that she got into a wreck and she was hurt bad and she couldn’t breathe,’ Dhondup’s best friend, Tyler Craft, told KSL.
‘She went to go drop her wedding gifts off and she was on her way back to the party. She was not even a mile away.’
‘They got to say their ‘I Dos,’ but they didn’t get to live on for everything else’
‘They had a whole life planned out together and he just cut it short,’ Craft said.
Dhondup leaves behind two young sons and a daughter she was one week away from adopting, according to a GoFundMe set up by her family.
Senseless tragedy statistic
Family members of Dhondup held a vigil on Saturday night and balloons of her favorite color, purple, – the color of her wedding dress, were released into the sky in her honor.
Gonzalez-Rea is being held without bail in the Salt Lake County Jail.
He was arrested on suspicion of automobile homicide with criminal negligence and driving under the influence, theft, failure to remain at an accident involving death, DUI and reckless driving.
According to the Utah Department of Public Safety’s latest report, 1,970 alcohol-related driver crashes occurred in Utah in 2016, which resulted in 1,220 injured persons and 36 deaths.
