A year after six farmworkers died in a Napa County crash, California continues to face hundreds of DUI-related deaths and thousands of injuries each year.
Six farmworkers left the Stockton area for an overnight grape-picking job in Napa County. Their families expected them home.
They never came back.
One year later, the Sept. 7, 2025 crash remains a painful reminder of what impaired driving can do—not only to the person behind the wheel, but to people who had no role in the decision to drive.
Six passengers in a Toyota Sienna were killed when the vehicle crashed into a tree on Pope Valley Road. Prosecutors allege that driver Norberto Celerino was under the influence of alcohol. He survived the crash along with another passenger.
According to the Napa County District Attorney’s Office, Celerino faces six counts of murder, six counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and a felony DUI charge involving two or more prior DUI convictions.
Prosecutors identified DUI convictions in 2020 and 2024. Another older conviction could not be used to enhance the current charges because it was more than 10 years old. Celerino has pleaded not guilty, and the case remains pending.
Most of the men killed were reportedly immigrants from Mexico and agricultural workers from the Stockton area.
That detail matters because the people who died were not simply passengers in a news story. They were workers traveling to earn a living.
California’s DUI problem did not end with Napa
The Napa crash was extraordinary because six people died at once. But impaired driving remains a persistent problem across California.
The California Highway Patrol says that from 2023 through 2025, DUI-attributed crashes in California averaged more than 800 deaths and nearly 20,000 injuries each year.
That means the danger is not limited to holiday weekends or isolated high-profile crashes.
And the person who makes the decision to drive impaired is often not the person who bears the greatest consequence.
A passenger can die. A pedestrian can die. Another driver can die on the way to work. Children can lose a parent. Families can suddenly face medical bills, funeral costs and lost income.
When previous DUIs don’t prevent another tragedy
The Napa case also raises a harder question:
What happens when someone has already demonstrated that impaired driving is dangerous, yet another crash occurs?
That question is bigger than one defendant or one prosecution.
In Los Angeles County, former LAPD officer Edgar Verduzco pleaded guilty in 2025 to three counts of murder after a 2017 DUI crash killed Mario Davila, his wife, Maribel, and their 19-year-old son, Oscar. Prosecutors said Verduzco was driving about 150 mph while under the influence of alcohol.
He was sentenced in July 2025 to 15 years to life. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office prosecuted the case.
In another California case, Oscar Eduardo Ortega Anguiano was convicted in 2022 of two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated after a crash killed two teenagers. He received a 10-year state sentence and was later sentenced in federal court in 2026 for illegally reentering the United States after deportation.
The immigration case is separate from the DUI convictions. The larger lesson is about something else: a previous deadly crash did not prevent another cycle of legal consequences.
These cases do not establish that every repeat DUI offender will cause another fatal crash. They do show why prevention cannot end with a conviction.
The people who never chose the risk
Daniel Alejandro Oliva Morales was driving to work in June 2025 when, prosecutors allege, another driver hit his car on Interstate 80 near Albany.
Oliva, an Amazon delivery driver, died after his vehicle was forced off the freeway. His family remembered him as a husband and father.
Like the farmworkers killed in Napa, Oliva was simply traveling somewhere.
That is one of the most important facts about DUI crashes: the victim does not have to participate in the risky decision.
A person can be doing everything normally—going to work, taking a family trip, driving home—and still become the victim of someone else’s impaired driving.
What this means for Latino and working families
The Latino connection to this issue should be understood carefully.
Latino identity does not cause impaired driving, and demographic data should never be used to make that claim.
But Latino families and working communities can be deeply affected by fatal crashes, particularly when victims are agricultural workers, delivery workers and other people whose jobs require transportation.
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles DUI Management Information System tracks DUI arrests and convictions by factors including race and ethnicity, along with other DUI-related information.
That data can help journalists and policymakers examine disparities without turning demographic statistics into explanations for individual behavior.
For Parriva readers, the more useful question is not whether a particular ethnicity is responsible for DUI.
It is whether California is doing enough to prevent impaired drivers from putting other people’s lives at risk—and whether prevention reaches the communities most affected by these deaths.
For broader context on the immigrant and working-family issues that intersect with California policy and everyday life, readers can also explore Parriva’s immigration coverage.
Prevention is the part that matters before the crash
After a fatal DUI crash, the justice system can determine whether someone is criminally responsible.
But prosecution happens after the irreversible event.
Prevention happens before it.
That can mean deciding before drinking begins who will drive. It can mean using a rideshare or taxi, handing over the keys, arranging a sober ride home or making sure a friend does not drive after drinking.
It also means continuing to examine whether California’s interventions for repeat DUI offenders are actually preventing future dangerous driving.
The California Office of Traffic Safety and CHP continue to promote impaired-driving enforcement and prevention campaigns across the state.
But enforcement alone cannot answer every prevention question.
A year later, six families are still without someone they expected to come home
The Napa crash is now a year old.
The legal case will continue through the courts. The families will continue living with the loss.
And California will continue to see impaired-driving crashes unless enough people make a different decision before they get behind the wheel.
The six farmworkers killed in Napa did not choose the risk that ended their lives.
Neither did the Davila family.
Neither did Daniel Oliva Morales.
That is why DUI prevention is ultimately about more than punishing a driver after a tragedy.
It is about protecting the people who are simply trying to get home.
