Student avoids jail for crash that killed friend

Nov 10, 2009 1 min read

LARGO (AP) – A high school senior won’t go to jail for borrowing his mother’s car when he was 15 and causing a fatal accident.

Shawn Ledesma, who is now 17, was sentenced to two years of house arrest and four more years of probation Monday. He pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide.

Authorities say he was driving his mother’s car with just a learner’s permit when he caused an accident that killed one of his five teenage passengers, Raquel Carreras, in November 2007. Carreras, a cheerleader at their high school, was 14.