Don’t bet someone’s life

On April 23, we’re told there was a small gathering around the spot where Fallon Montanucci was killed in a wrong-way collision with a drunken driver in 2022.

Just three days later, a Good Samaritan, who stopped to render aid to someone involved in a single vehicle rollover on Interstate 580 around 2 a.m., was killed when an allegedly intoxicated driver struck her and the first vehicle.

According to the Nevada Highway Patrol, the original collision also involved an impaired driver.

A Reno man remains in Douglas County custody facing vehicular homicide charges in connection with a March 20 wrong-way drunken driving collision on Highway 50.

We realize that a couple of these cases are still in their early stages going through the courts, but we have plenty of other examples where intoxicated drivers have killed someone.

As of today, we have no idea where Joan Kathryn Wenger has gone. Wenger was sentenced to 10 years to life for being intoxicated when she rammed the back of a vehicle, killing a Dayton woman.

The 70-year-old walked away from a minimum security prison in September 2024 after her appeal of her 2021 sentencing was denied by the Nevada Supreme Court.

The assumption is that she had help, but Wenger was also in the wind after the Feb. 28, 2020, wreck on Highway 395 near Johnson Lane, not far from where Fallon Montanucci’s last act saved her sister’s life two years later.

The man whose drunkenness resulted in Montanucci’s death is serving his 16-40 year sentence in transitional housing, according to Nevada Department of Corrections records.

That Wenger was able to walk away from her sentence is an indication of what the State of Nevada actually thinks about incarcerating people who’ve killed a random fellow motorist.

Any time anyone gets in a vehicle while intoxicated, no matter the substance, they are spinning a big wheel of fate that could result in killing someone. That’s a bet that we wish people wouldn’t take, ever.