Man gets prison after repeat DUI

Man gets prison after repeat DUI

DUI manslaughter did not deter another drinking and driving arrest

By LYNSIE BREAUX

BAKER COUNTY, FL - Despite a relatively light docket Monday of only 67 cases, Judge Phyllis Rosier sent several people to prison following felony court.

Joseph W. Nerone, 30, returned to Baker County to face violation of probation charges stemming from a March 2, 1997 crash in which one passenger was killed and two others were severely injured. He had originally been charged with one count of DUI manslaughter and two counts of DUI causing personal injury.

According to the police report, Nerone, at that time a student at Daytona Beach's Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University was traveling along I-10 along with three fellow students. The vehicle left the road and struck a tree killing Jeffrey Scott Jackson and injuring Matthew R. Drake and Arturo Torres Valdes.

Baker County clerk records show that he was sentenced to six years probation April 8, 2002. With only five months left in his probation term, Nerone was involved in an accident in Massachusetts and was once again charged with driving under the influence.

Judge Rosier sentenced him to two years in prison to be served in his home state of Massachusetts.

And the DUI cases were not finished.

Alta Marie Pringle, 48, pled guilty to a pair of charges of driving under the influence.

According to police reports Pringle was seen driving September 20, 2007 and crossed the centerline several times.

While out on bail and preparing to enter a plea on her 2007 DUI, Pringle was also charged with DUI in Baker County in 2002, an officer was stopped at the Econo-Lodge on Woodlawn Road.

The deputy reported seeing two pickup trucks race past him driving erratically. While attempting to pull the two trucks over, one vehicle took off at an even higher rate of speed fishtailing and nearly going into the ditch several times.

The deputy pulled over the second pickup truck and reported that the female driver of the truck verbally assaulted him using multiple expletives and tried to explain that "everyone fishtails down Woodlawn Road."

The deputy decided that even if everyone does fishtail down the road he smelled alcohol on the driver and arrested her.

Once at the jail, the deputy tried to get her to sign the tickets. Apparently she was unable to do so as she had passed out.

Pringle will be spending the next five years in prison and will have to undergo substance abuse treatment while in prison.

Jeremiah Prince Henderson, 20, was the only person convicted Monday who had no previous adult arrests showing in Baker County.

Henderson pled no contest and was adjudicated guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon following a July 19, 2007 arrest. He was charged with robbing a woman at the Mercantile Bank A.T.M.

Henderson was sentenced to three years in prison followed by two years probation.