After 2 DUIs, he drove drunk again, prosecutors say. This time, it was deadly
The vehicle that slammed into Susan Cameron’s car in September 2024 had been rocketing through a business district in Lenexa at more than 125 mph just before the crash, prosecutors said.
The man who had been driving the other vehicle, Vincente Perez, of Barstow, California, had been extremely intoxicated, according to court documents. Even four hours after the crash, Perez’s blood-alcohol level registered at .25, more than three times the legal limit. Cameron died at the scene of the crash near the intersection of College Boulevard and Thompson Avenue, and her husband suffered a variety of injuries and had to have surgery.
“Driving 125 miles per hour on I-35 is dangerous,” prosecutors wrote in court documents ahead of a Tuesday sentencing hearing for Perez in Johnson County District Court. “Driving 125 miles per hour on College and Thompson is a recipe for death.”
At the time of the crash, Perez had been on probation for a 2023 DUI charge in California. And just 18 days before the Lenexa crash, he had picked up yet another DUI — this one in Arizona — but hadn’t been arrested there, despite violating his probation, prosecutors said.
After Perez pleaded guilty to a murder charge in April, Johnson County prosecutors asked for a long prison sentence — 314 months, or a little more than 26 years — and Judge Thomas Sutherland agreed and handed down that sentence Tuesday.
“If anything could ever make someone realize they had a problem, Perez had everything flashing before him,” Assistant District Attorney Kendall Kaut wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “He had two DUI incidents within 10 months. He had DUIs in two states. He had a probation order telling him not to drink and drive.”
Perez, Kaut said, “ignored it all and killed Susan Cameron.”
Perez’s defense attorney, Joshua Brunkhorst, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Brunkhorst wrote in a sentencing memorandum ahead of Tuesday’s hearing that the case was “tragic” and said both the Cameron and Perez families would be changed forever. Brunkhorst argued that the 314-month request from prosecutors was more than triple the average sentence handed down in similarly situated cases in Johnson County.
“By the defendant’s own decisions, on September 7th, 2024, two families where (sic) forever changed,” he wrote. “The Cameron family lost a wife, a mother. The Perez family will see a young father spend a substantial amount of time in prison, likely to miss his son’s entire youth.”
Perez pleaded guilty in April to reckless second-degree murder, driving under the influence aggravated battery, transporting an open container and driving while suspended.
In August 2024, 18 days before the Lenexa crash, Perez registered a blood-alcohol level of .176 in the Arizona DUI, prosecutors said. In December 2023, he pleaded no contest to a DUI in California and was placed on probation for three years, they said.
“It’s one thing when an offender goes years between DUIs,” Kaut wrote in court documents. “But in a timeframe faster than most men get a new haircut, Perez went from a DUI of over 2x the legal limit in Arizona to killing Susan Cameron while over 3x the legal limit in Kansas. If someone gets two DUIs — in rapid succession — with both massively over the legal limit, their future dangerousness is high.”
In her obituary, loved ones remembered Cameron as a loving, gracious and selfless woman who had showered love on her family.
“Her enduring legacy will always be the epitome of a servant’s heart,” family members wrote. “Susan was always willing to go to the ends of the earth to help or make someone’s day better. It is through our memories of her sacrifice, her love, and her joy that we find comfort and inspiration.”
