In the past week, I've heard the name Obdulia Sanchez constantly in local news and booming on social media. In case you haven't heard, this is the situation:
Obdulia Sanchez is an eighteen-year old California native who was live streaming herself drunk driving with three other girls in the vehicle, including her fourteen-year old sister Jacqueline. While live streaming, Obdulia can be seen dancing and constantly taking her hands off the wheel to throw up gang signs on a highway in California surrounded by open fields. Reportedly, Sanchez had also been live streaming herself earlier in the day doing similar things, taking her hands off the wheel to dance and even recording herself swerving the car to garner social media attention. The actual crash happened when Sanchez once again swerved the vehicle, only this time she lost control and flipped the car over, which in turn ejected her fourteen-year old sister Jacqueline from the vehicle.
Following this horrific event, Sanchez continued to live stream, even going as far as repeatedly showing her little sister's crushed and bloody skull as she laid there dying. Instead of attempting to help her little sister, Sanchez continued to live stream and shake her sister, then stating, "My sister is dying. I don't give a fuck." When the police arrived, it was apparent that Obdulia had been drinking, though well under the legal drinking age at only eighteen, and when they checked her blood alcohol level it was well over the legal limit at 0.08.
After hearing this disturbing and frankly disgusting story, what is your opinion on Obdulia Sanchez? For me, it's pure and utter disgust; I have absolutely no sympathy for this girl. I believe she deserves a life sentence for her complete and utter disregard for the life of her sister, and the sheer audacity she had to disrespect her sister's body by exploiting it on social media for more attention.
Though I recognize that this is only an opinion and other people are entitled to view the situation differently, the fact that there is currently a "Free Obdulia Sanchez" movement going on within social media right now is utterly unbelievable to me.
After Obdulia was taken into custody and it was announced that she was being charged with both vehicular manslaughter and a DUI, the public decided that this was yet another perfect, though completely inappropriate, opportunity to begin a protest movement. People began coming out with statements saying that Obdulia was a child, that she made a mistake, that she shouldn't be held accountable for her actions, and that this incident shouldn't determine the rest of her life.
Once again, I respect that other people are just as entitled to their opinions about the situation as I am, and they may not believe that Sanchez should be locked up for life, that she should serve the five years minimum for vehicular manslaughter and be allowed to move on with whatever idiotic things she decides to do in the future after killing her sister. I don't agree with them, but I get it. She'll serve her time and then hopefully go on to reform herself and her twisted mindset. But to say that she shouldn't be held accountable at all for something she clearly decided to do, knowing full well that she was putting herself and more importantly all of her passengers in danger-- it's absolutely ludicrous.The thing is, I strongly believe that this entire movement is not based on actually wanting supposed "justice" for Obdulia Sanchez. Instead, people saw this as another opportunity to protest about something that they knew little to nothing about, and cause another scandalous and controversial rift in public opinion.Many of Sanchez's supporters are claiming that she is only being charged with these crimes because she is a woman of color, and further if she had been a white male, the case would have been dropped immediately. Though I do recognize that similar things have happened in the past, such as with the Stanford rape case, I can't say that such is the situation with the Obdulia Sanchez case. I agree whole-heartedly that our justice system is a corrupt institution in that it's aimed at imprisoning a majority of people of color, and is biased towards releasing white citizens on the same charges. However, this does not mean that we can ignore crime and not seek justice for the obvious victims of serious offenses.If Obdulia Sanchez is allowed to walk free of charge, she will learn nothing from her heinous actions. She will have caused the death of her sister with minimal if any remorse, and will continue to be the less than upstanding citizen she was before the accident. If Obdulia Sanchez is allowed to walk free, there will be no justice for the fourteen-year old girl who lost her life in a sudden and horrific manner. What I want to know is, when did we abandon the idea of justice for the chance to say "fuck the system"? Though there are many situations in which protests and speaking out are just and should be encouraged, there are also hundreds of situations in which a criminal, no matter their race, needs to be punished for their crimes against undeserving human beings. Remember that before following the "Free Obdulia Sanchez" Facebook page.
