Murder Charges Filed Against Laguna Doctor

SANTA ANA —  Murder charges were filed Friday against a Laguna Beach doctor accused of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs when he hit and killed a Mission Viejo couple and critically injured their daughter.

Prosecutors both upgraded vehicular manslaughter charges against Dr. Ronald Joseph Allen and added a felony charge of driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol and causing serious injury after concluding that Allen was acutely aware of the hazards of driving while impaired.

“Who else would know better about driving while using alcohol and drugs than a physician?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Molko said after Allen made a brief court appearance here. The physician’s medical background was a “significant factor” in filing the new charges, Molko said.

Allen, 31, looked haggard and his appearance had changed because he wasn’t wearing his customary toupee. If convicted on the second-degree murder charges, the internist, who has a history of arrests for driving under the influence, could be sentenced from 15 years to life on each count.

Deputy Public Defender Michael Giannini said his client is distraught over the July 11 head-on collision that killed Mark and Noreen Minzey and critically injured their 11-year-old daughter, Karie, who is slowly recovering from her injuries.

The physician, who has reportedly attempted suicide in the past, is being held in protective custody to prevent him from harming himself, Giannini said.

“He is overwhelmingly remorseful,” Giannini said, adding that Allen’s depression is compounded by the “irrational” belief that he is also to blame for his father’s death in Illinois just a few hours before the crash.

The case has gained widespread attention since it was revealed that even before the fatal crash, Allen had been arrested twice on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol.

An outstanding warrant for Allen’s arrest stemming from a 1992 drunk-driving incident wasn’t discovered when police arrested him on suspicion of drunk driving on June 1, and again when he was stopped for speeding only hours before the fatal accident.

Further, state medical officials have acknowledged they failed to act promptly after receiving a report that Allen’s medical privileges were suspended at South Coast Medical Center, where he was taken after his June 1 arrest.

At that time, according to police reports, Allen told hospital officials he had ingested a large quantity of drugs in an attempt to kill himself because he was distraught over his wife’s death. Allen is not married.

Molko has refused to reveal preliminary results of drug and alcohol tests, but he said the combined influence of drugs and alcohol indicate that Allen was driving impaired on the night of the crash.

Giannini, however, said his preliminary report from prosecutors shows Allen’s blood-alcohol level at the time of the collision was between 0.03% and 0.05%, well below the legal limit of 0.08%. Giannini had no details about Allen’s suspected drug use, although the doctor was found with both fresh and old injection marks in his body after the arrest.

Meanwhile, Allen remains bewildered by the tragic turn his life has taken, according to his defense attorney. Once a physician who fought death by treating terminally ill AIDS victims, Allen cannot believe he is now charged with taking lives, Giannini said.

“He is morally bewildered and confused. For him to wake up and know that he’s involved in these deaths, he’s absolutely in a state of moral shock,” Giannini said.

“Ten or 11 years he spent preparing to save lives,” said the attorney, adding that Allen’s practice involved caring for 100 to 150 HIV-positive and AIDS-infected patients too poor to pay for their own medical bills.

Giannini said his client recognized his alcohol-abuse problem before the crash and was receiving treatment through Alcoholics Anonymous.

The defense attorney said he cannot rule out the possibility that grief over his father and a desire to ease his pain drove Allen to drugs and alcohol on the day he hit the Minzey family.

“The death of his father is a major factor in this tragedy,” he said, adding that the depressing nature of his medical work also caused emotional problems.

“He goes to work knowing that every patient who walks in his door will die on him,” Giannini said, adding that Allen has been too distraught to discuss the accident.

Allen’s father had recently visited his son and the two discussed Allen’s plan to repay his parents for their financial help during college, medical school and his residency, Giannini said.

Allen felt “impotent that he couldn’t just pay his father back these large sums of money . . . and then he gets a phone call ‘Your dad is dead,’ ” Giannini said. “It’s irrational, but he blames himself. On top of this total destruction . . . he thinks he’s responsible for his father’s death.”

Giannini said it is not fair that prosecutors hold Allen’s medical background against him in filing the new charges.

“If someone is having a problem with drugs, it doesn’t matter if they are a doctor,” he said.

Murder charges are unusual in drunk-driving cases, unless the prosecution believes ample evidence exists that the driver was fully aware of the hazards of driving while impaired.

John S. Rushton of the Orange County Chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving said Friday he is pleased that murder charges were filed.

“We have always looked at such egregious crimes as murder, not accidents, not crashes,” said Rushton, whose chapter plans to closely monitor the Allen case. “We have always felt that murder is what prosecutors should be pushing for.”