STOCKTON — The driver of a private bus in Northern California that crashed in 2008 and killed 11 passengers headed to a casino has been released from prison after his sentence was reduced because of changes in state law.
After nearly 12 years in custody, Quinton Watts, 64, was released Wednesday from California State Prison-Solano in Vacaville. His supporters traveled to Vacaville to pick him up, including two of his three daughters who went in an Uber. But they had to meet him at a train station him 37 miles away in downtown Sacramento where prison staff had driven him, the Sacramento Bee reported Friday.
Dressed in sweatpants, a beanie and surgical mask with gray goatee hairs showing through the side, Watts didn’t look like his daughter, Daisha Watts, had remembered from 12 years ago.
She was seven years old when she last saw him in person. But when she walked into Sacramento Valley Station, she recognized him immediately.
“I remembered his face,” she said.
Colusa County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Thompson took nine years off Watts’ 26-year prison term during a Jan. 25 hearing, ruling that he was properly sentenced at the time but that subsequent legal changes to sentencing enhancements made him eligible to have his sentence shortened.
Watts was driving the bus with 40 passengers from the Sacramento area to a casino near Colusa on Oct. 5, 2008, when the bus veered off the road.
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February 07, 2021 at 07:00PM
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Bus driver in crash that killed 11 leaves prison - Antelope Valley Press
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