SAN DIEGO — Angel Dominguez Ramirez Jr.'s turn from a U.S. Marine to the leader of a Mexican drug trafficking cell can be traced back to the night of Nov. 29, 1994.
That's when he swerved to avoid hitting a deer on a back road in North Carolina and flipped his car off a bridge into water. He was seriously injured, forcing a medical discharge from the Marines and ending his dream of joining a special operations unit. Even more devastating, his two daughters, ages 3 and 4, who were in the backseat, were killed.
"He has never made an excuse for the direction he took, only to say that after the accident, he stopped caring. He was numb," his defense lawyer Nancee Schwartz wrote in a sentencing memorandum. "He didn't think or care about consequences because he had experienced the worst."
