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Officer Christopher Lokers arrived at the scene at 8:29. He could see three bloody bodies on the east side of the road. He found Williams crouched behind her vehicle, and moved her to a different spot, one without a clear view of the bodies.

At 6 pm on May 5 of 2020, twenty-eight year old Ashley Rene Williams sent an order, probably while still at work in Poway, to the Shake Specials marijuana dispensary: a half-gram of Gelato, a half-gram of mid-shelf salad, and a gram of Elmer’s Glue, to be delivered to her home address in Escondido. She texted a message: “Hey, can I get my delivery delivered at 9 pm? I’ll be home from work by 9 no later.” At 8 pm, she re-sent the order, and texted, “I’m still not receiving your text messages can you call me to confirm my order.” Five minutes later, she called Shake Specials. Four minutes after that, she called again. Then at 8:11, she sent a message to her mother: “Put my weed jar at the end of the stairs I’ma getting off now I’ma go swing by and grab that.” But Williams did not pick up her jar that evening.

Ashley Williams never braked or swerved as she was driving on the sidewalk and running over four people.

Photograph by Eva Knott

By 8:21, Williams was driving in her silver 2014 Mazda 3. She used her phone to play a song off YouTube: D-Lo’s “Double Dutch” featuring Sleepy D. At 8:25, she sent a chat message to someone named Brian: “It’s Ashley let me know when you get back to Escondido, yeah?” She also started playing another song on YouTube: Philthy Rich’s “Ready to Ride,” featuring D-Lo. Then she changed her mind and played Biggie’s “The World is Filled…” featuring Too Short and Puff Daddy. That song, which lasted 4 minutes and 56 seconds, was recorded playing in the background when her car made an emergency phone call after coming to an abrupt stop.

The Mazda made a 911 connection through Williams’ phone at 8:27. It notified her that it was making the call, conducted a ten-second countdown, and then connected Ashley to an emergency dispatcher. An investigator later said that when Williams’ car ran up onto the sidewalk and ran over four pedestrians, the impacts were insufficient to trigger the car’s airbag and emergency call features. It was only after the car left the sidewalk, crossed an intersection, jumped back onto the sidewalk, and slammed into a tree that it made those emergency responses.

Daylight view of the road and intersection where the incident occurred.

Evidence Photo

Escondido police detective Patrick Hall said that a 911 call came from Williams’ phone. In the recording of that call, loud music could be heard in the background as a woman said, “I’m sorry, let me pull over,” and, “I don’t know what happened.” The woman never responded to the dispatcher’s attempts to communicate with her, said Hall.

THE GUY ON THE MOTORCYCLE

Shane Butler was sitting on his motorcycle on Escondido’s San Pasqual Road, waiting to make a left turn, when he saw a silver Mazda whiz by at speed. He heard collisions, and then he saw a cloud of dust or smoke. He left his bike and ran to where the car had crashed. Later, he told an Escondido police officer that when he arrived, he saw a woman in the driver’s seat, frantically searching her car. She said she had dropped her phone, that she had been on the phone with her mom, and that she needed to call her. But when the woman found her phone, Butler took it from her, removed her from the car, and made her sit on the curb. He told police he thought she was trying to leave the scene.

THE POLICE

Officer Christopher Lokers arrived at the scene at 8:29. He could see three bloody bodies on the east side of the road. He found Williams crouched behind her vehicle, and moved her to a different spot, one without a clear view of the bodies. He later said that she was yelling that she needed to call her mom, because her mom was taking care of her child.

Escondido police were able to get a data recorder out of Ashley’s wrecked Mazda.

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Detective Michael Nelson arrived at the scene. He noted the “clean and dry conditions;” there had been no rain, and there were no obvious driving hazards in the area. In his report, he described the Mazda: “There was six feet of an uprooted tree sticking out of the front end of the car. And there were clumps of black hair in the windshield.” He found blood on different external surfaces of the car. He also found four different pairs of shoes scattered about the scene, belonging to the four pedestrians who had been struck. Two of them were declared dead at the scene, and two were taken to Palomar hospital, where they later succumbed to blunt-force injuries. He also noted that Williams’ driver’s license had been suspended four months earlier, after a misdemeanor conviction for DUI on January 27, 2020 involving drugs.

After a month’s investigation, Escondido police arrested Williams on June 4, 2020. Since then, she has been held in the Las Colinas Jail for women in lieu of $1 million bail.

THE VICTIMS

A woman named Norma Espinoza approached Hall. “A female arrived and said her family had not come home, and they were not answering their phones,” Hall later testified in court. Espinoza was able to describe what her family had been wearing that night when they left the house for an evening walk. And she identified the four pairs of shoes scattered around. She knew which shoes went to which person. When the family of the deceased heard this testimony in court, they wept loudly.

In early May of 2020, there was a government-imposed lockdown due to covid. So the matron of the family — grandmother Carmela Camacho, 50 — had organized a family walk, to get out of the house and get fresh air. On that Tuesday night, Camacho was walking with her friend Able Juan Valdez, 33, and her two grandchildren, Emmanuel Rivas, 11, and Yvonny Felix, 10. The group had turned around and were headed back home. They were only a few minutes away when they were killed.

THE DRUGS

Officer Lokers said he rode in the ambulance with Williams to the hospital, where her blood was drawn. Forensic toxicologists later declared that she tested positive for three different substances: marijuana, methamphetamine and Difluoroethane, or DFE.

Investigators collected an aerosol can from the floor in front of the passenger seat of the wrecked Mazda. An evidence technician lifted Williams’ fingerprint off the can. Erin Crabtrey, who works for BioTox labs in Riverside, testified that DFE can be found in spray top cans. It can be sprayed directly into the nose or mouth or sprayed into a bag from which the user then “huffs” the substance by inhaling. Crabtrey said that huffing creates a feeling of euphoria or dizziness. The effect takes place within seconds and wears off in minutes. Crabtrey said that inhalants such as DFE displace oxygen in the blood, which can make the user pass out or lose consciousness for a period of time. Because DFE wears off quickly, and because it was found in Williams’ blood, a prosecutor claimed that she was probably “huffing” while driving.

A can of aerosol spray found in Ashely Williams’ car that night.

Evidence Photo

Crabtrey also found both methamphetamines and metabolites from meth in Williams’ blood. She said that the drug is a stimulant, and that when a user is behind the wheel, this stimulation could be expressed through speed, aggressive driving, risk taking, or running stop signs and signals. A different technician found evidence in the blood of cannabinoids and Delta 9 THC, the active compound in marijuana.

THE ACCIDENT

Police officer Tyler Sounter is an expert in accident reconstruction. He visited the scene of the crash to take photos and collect evidence, including the Mazda’s event data recorder, which was triggered when the car collided with the tree. The recorder showed that the driver never stopped pressing on the car’s accelerator during the incident. Throughout, it was pressed down between 34 percent and 37 percent, with the car traveling between 48 and 52 miles per hour. The recorder showed that the driver had one foot resting on the brake pedal throughout the event, but it was never enough to reduce her speed. Sounter made a diagram of the incident, taking information from the recorder in half-second increments.

THE HEARING

In August of 2021, Williams was given a pre-trial hearing. She was charged with nine felonies: four counts of second-degree murder, plus four counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, plus one count of driving under the influence causing death. By this point, she was 29. She appeared in court wearing a gray sweatshirt labeled SD JAIL; she wore no makeup, and her hair was pulled to one side in a long braid.

Williams had several supporters in attendance; they sat in the courtroom gallery. Whenever she entered or exited the courtroom during the day-long hearing, Williams and her supporters blew kisses back and forth. The four deceased persons also had supporters in attendance. During a break in the hearing, the two groups met in the hall — one seated, one standing. Words were exchanged. Voices were raised. The standers approached the sitters. Then a deputy passed through the hall, and peace was restored.

During the hearing, prosecutor Laurie Hauf showed the judge a four-page document from the California DMV, dated February 27, 2020. The prosecutor said the document proved that Williams had been properly informed that her driver’s license was suspended because of her DUI conviction one month earlier. And the prosecutor said that at the time of that conviction, court transcripts showed that Williams had been informed that if, in the future, someone died as a result of her driving while intoxicated, she could be charged with murder. Hauf told Judge Carlos Armour that there was implied malice, because Williams had been warned that she could kill someone if she drove under the influence. “She was probably huffing or inhaling while she was driving,” said Hauf. “She knew it was dangerous. She did it anyway.” Hauf noted that Williams never braked or swerved as she was driving on the sidewalk and running over four people. And she noted that one month prior to the fatal crash, on April 4, Williams had posted videos of herself to social media: a video that showed her rolling marijuana cigarettes while seated in the front seat of her car, another video showing her smoking the cigarettes, and another video of her driving. She labelled one video “420” and “getting lit” — references to marijuana use.

Defense attorney Rick Crawford responded that the crash was an accident. He said that while Williams may have been impaired, evidence showed that what she had been doing was non-attentive driving — using her cell phone while operating the vehicle. He insisted that the event was not another DUI, but an accident due to distracted driving. Timestamps from Williams’ phone indicated that she was indeed on the phone during the crash, and one expert testified that she was “trying to change the song” when it happened.

Judge Armour was not convinced. He noted that Williams had “at least three substances in her system” at the time of the accident, and ordered her to face trial on all nine felony charges. She was arraigned on those charges on September 14, 2021. She pleaded not-guilty, and is next due in court on January 25, 2022, when a trial date will be selected.