A nurse suspected of causing a fiery crash that killed six people after she allegedly ploughed through a red light in Los Angeles earlier this month “does not have a dangerous driving history,” her attorneys claimed in court on Monday.
37-year-old Nicole Lorraine Linton is being held without bail in connection with murder charges stemming from the August 4 crash. She was set to have a hearing over her bail Monday, but her attorneys asked to judge to postpone it until the end of the month.
Reports have said that Linton had at least 13 previous crashes — including a 2020 injury accident that totaled two cars — and knew the threat posed by her driving behavior.
But Linton’s attorneys denied these claims on Monday.
“It’s been reported extensively and it’s not true,” Halim Dhanidina said in court, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“Our initial investigation has demonstrated that that allegation that’s been bandied about in the media is patently false.”
Linton did not appear in court for her hearing on Monday, but Judge Victoria B. Wilson ordered that she appear in person for the next bail review hearing. The judge continued that hearing until until August 31.
Linton, a traveling nurse from Houston, Texas, who was working in Los Angeles at the time of the crash, is charged with six counts of murder and five counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence.
One murder charge was filed for the pregnant woman’s unborn child.
Prosecutors said Linton’s Mercedes-Benz was doing 90 mph on August 4 when it ran a red light and smashed into cars in a crowded intersection in unincorporated Windsor Hills about 10 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The crash killed 23-year-old Asherey Ryan, her 11-month-old son Alonzo Quintero and her boyfriend, Reynold Lester, Sha’seana Kerr said in a GoFundMe posting.
Lester’s family said the 24-year-old security guard was the father of Ryan’s unborn child. The family has said Ryan was on the way to a doctor’s appointment for a prenatal checkup when she was killed.
One murder charge — but not an additional charge of vehicular manslaughter — was filed for the fetus, who was identified by the coroner’s office as Armani Lester and listed as born on the same day he died.
“A young family was destroyed in the blink of an eye,” District Attorney George Gascón said at a news conference.
Two female victims were later identified as 38-year-old Lynette Noble and 42-year-old Nathesia Lewis. They were driving together when their car instantly burst into flames, family members told the Times. The bodies of the two weren’t immediately identified due to severe trauma.
While the identification of the bodies are pending verification from the county coroner, personal belongings and identification leading to Noble were found in the burnt car, family and friends say, according to reports.
In court last week, Linton’s lawyer, Halim Dhanidina, said his client has an out-of-state history of ‘profound mental health issues’ that might be linked to the crash but didn’t specify, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Linton is being held without bail at the Century Regional Detention Center and did not come to court for the brief hearing Monday.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón said last week that Linton faces up to life in prison if convicted on all charges.
Gascón said Linton was traveling at speeds of at least 90mph when she sped through a read light and hit crossing vehicles at the busy intersection of La Brea and Slauson Avenues.
Nea Irby was hanging out with Noble and Lewis the day they were killed. Irby, who is close friends with Noble, was driving separately from the two. She drove pass the intersection of the crash minutes before the accident. When she went back, she saw the fiery collision.
“I just thought it was a tragic accident,” Irby said.
“If I would have known it was Lynette, I would have turned my car around and went back to stay right there until they put out the fire. It’s been bothering me. I just have this vision in my head of this car on fire and to have found out that it was her is hard.”
At a vigil a few miles from the crash, Krystal Lewis, Nathesia’s sister, told the Times that her sister left behind seven children.
“She loved unconditionally,” Krystal said at the vigil. “It’s devastating. Like, everybody feels bad because it was so unexpected. When I saw the crash, I didn’t think that it was anybody I knew.”
Nathesia’s boyfriend, Clarence Hamlin, recalled her as being ‘loving and caring.’ Hamlin painted a mural of his late girlfriend on the side of her sister’s beauty salon.
“Everyone knows that she would have done anything for a stranger or someone in the community,” Hamlin said. “Maybe she was that way because her mother died when she was young.”
The day of the fatal crash, Hamlin didn’t know he lost his girlfriend in the fiery blaze. He rushed to call her and her friends after she didn’t come home that night, but was left with unanswered questions.
It wasn’t until days later when he knew Nathesia was dead that the news began to break him. He recalls walking at night and believing to have seen her, prompting him to run towards her. As he got near, he realized it was just an illusion.
Eight-month pregnant 23-year-old Asherey Ryan was pronounced dead at the scene alongside her one-year-old child Alonzo Luchiano Quintero and her unborn baby boy following the horrible crash.
The unborn child’s father, Reynold Lester, was also killed in the crash after the car split in half immediately on impact, those close to the family confirmed.
Asherey, Reynold, and little Alonzo were on their way to a doctor’s appointment for a pregnancy check-up when Linton smashed into the car they were traveling in.
“A young family was destroyed in the blink of an eye,” Gascón said last week. “There’s catastrophic damage to the families and friends of those killed and injured. It’s not only a tremendous loss to their families, but to our entire community, who learned of this incredible tragedy who watched the now viral video of the collision.”
Linton, who is now an ICU nurse, worked in a strip club and had a history of threatening suicide following bad break-ups. She suffered from mental health after her lover died in 2017.
She planned on marrying Germaine Mason, the Olympic silver medalist, before he was killed in a motorcycle crash, DailyMail.com exclusively revealed.
“When I saw what had happened in LA the first thing that went through my mind was that she had argued with her boyfriend and was drunk and trying to commit suicide,” a source close to Linton said.
“She had threatened to do it before. I thought maybe this time she had gone through with it.”
Her attorneys have argued that she has a ‘profound history’ of mental illness.
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