A Utah woman who lured her ex-boyfriend to a parking lot and ran him down with her SUV, killing him, was sentenced Tuesday in a Wyoming court to between 45 years and life in prison.
She’s also been ordered to pay $8,062.15 in restitution to the Wyoming Division of Victim Services.
Rene Daniels, 48, was convicted of second-degree murder June 20 after a trial in Sweetwater County District Court for killing Emiliano “Chico” Morales III. She ran over him with her SUV then drove him to the hospital, where he died the night of May 24-25, 2023, at the age of 43.
Many of Morales’ family members attended Daniels’ sentencing hearing. His mother, father, sister and son all testified.
“You know, Rene, I wish that I could hate you,” said Morales father, Emiliano Morales II. “With my whole heart. I can’t. I can’t because God won’t let me.”
Yet, the father continued, “You not only took my son, you took my best friend. He’d do anything for anybody. He had such a big heart.”
The father and the other family members testified that Daniels has not apologized to them or shown remorse.
“And that’s what’s disgusting,” said Morales’ father. “Unless you turn to God and find your ways, I feel sorry for you. I really do.”
Morales’ family members remembered him as a playful uncle, a good friend and a man trying to rebuild a relationship with his grown son. His sister, Andrea Morales Otero, said it shocked her when she got the call about his death, realizing he wasn’t indestructible.
A Century
Sweetwater County Attorney Dan Erramouspe asked for a harsher sentence than District Court Judge Richard Lavery dispensed: 75-100 years in prison.
In addition to the family members’ testimonies, Erramouspe also introduced evidence from a false reporting conviction, in which Daniels falsely accused a male jail deputy of sexual harassment last year. Video revealed that the deputy did not shove his genitalia through a door opening and toward her face as she had claimed.
She wrote an apology letter and accepted a plea agreement on that misdemeanor charge.
Erramouspe also introduced a recording of a phone call Daniels had with her young son while in jail. The prosecutor’s version of that call mutes the boy’s voice, and just plays Daniels’ half of the conversation, in which she told the boy that his own father was trying to keep her in jail.
Daniels’ attorney Michael Bennett objected repeatedly to airing of jail calls and evidence from the false reporting case, claiming this was the prosecutors trying to pile on, when Lavery had already sat through days of trial.
In the end, Lavery said the evidence was relevant because it spoke to Daniels’ character, and character is a consideration at sentencing hearings.
Erramouspe agreed, focusing on Daniels’ character during his argument.
“There’s no fixing the defendant,” said Erramouspe, who called the case a domestic violence murder. “We’ve seen time and time again, men who chase an ex down and kill them. This is no different than that.”
Rehabilitation And Hope
In response, Bennett said 75-100 years in prison was too much and he asked for a sentence closer to the 20-year minimum for second-degree murder, or a sentence with “hope” in it.
He urged Lavery to consider how Daniels’ family, like Morales’ family, is also suffering.
“The humanity of what this court is about to tackle is important,” said Bennett. “There is still hope, that spark Mr. Morales’ mother spoke so fondly of, and that his sister spoke so fondly of — and that his son is going to miss out on — that that spark will make a difference in someone else’s life.”
Morales is dead, and there was nothing Bennett could say to change that, he continued.
“But it’s the hope of rehabilitation, that this spark is not fully extinguished, and that this spark can grow into something for the betterment of maybe just one person; or maybe a number of people,” said Bennett.
Daniels also spoke on her own behalf, saying she knows she has “things I need to work on.”
“And I’m going to carry the weight of Chico’s death and my role in it for the rest of my life,” she said. “As will his family. And I do not take that lightly, carelessly or callously.”
She said she’d use her time in prison to grow and become a better person, and that she’s sorry for the pain and suffering of the Morales family.
What Happened
The night of May 24, Daniels arranged to meet Morales at the Kum n’ Go in Rock Springs so she could give him back his things, according to the case evidentiary affidavit. They’d dated for two years prior, but he was then seeing a different woman.
She told investigators they were arguing, that he broke the window of her vehicle, and that she ran him over when he suddenly appeared in front of her Tahoe, the document says.
Witnesses, rather, reported the Tahoe spinning around, flinging dirt in the dirt lot near a man on the ground. The man got up and got into the vehicle at some point. Another witness reported seeing a man kneeling in the gravel, and the Tahoe “whip a donut around and stop” near the man.
The dirt tracks revealed that the vehicle drove through the lot, hit a “disturbance” then kept driving another 50 feet after running that “disturbance” over, says the affidavit. Then the vehicle turned around and returned the same direction, which is consistent with other evidence that she picked him up after hitting him and took him to the hospital.
“His stuff was in the street and he was waiting to get his stuff,” Erramouspe explained at the sentencing hearing, when describing the fatal collision. “He does what he thought was going to be safe. He goes across to a lot where there was no reasonable ingress or egress. And she followed him again. She jumped the curb and followed him. She was not going to let him get away.”
Further investigation revealed that Daniels had sent Morales videos of herself burning and ripping up Morales’ photos and drawings, including photos of Morales’ son. She sent him several graphic, expletive-riddled, and threatening text messages, according to multiple court documents in the case file.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
