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After long wait, Albuquerque woman faces court over crash
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It may have taken minutes to arraign an Albuquerque woman accused of paralyzing a Vietnamese immigrant in a suicidal crash, but it also took more than six months to get the woman to court to do so.
Cynthia Seeley, 41, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of great bodily injury by vehicle, aggravated DWI and running through a stop sign during a brief hearing before state District Judge Kenneth Martinez in Albuquerque
Seeley is accused of slamming her Chevy Avalanche into a Lexus driven by Tran Dung, 47, in the June 16 crash near Mountain Road and Georgia Street Northeast.
Authorities say Dung was injured so severely in the crash that they initially charged Seeley with vehicular homicide.
They may yet. Court documents indicate that Dung's neck was broken in the crash, which left him paralyzed from the neck down and made it hard for him to breathe.
University of New Mexico Hospital doctors who treated Dung told detectives he would not recover and will eventually die a "slow, painful death."
Prosecutors say Dung remains in perilous condition but could provide no further details.
Dung's family members were not in court Friday.
Attorneys on both sides of the case say Seeley's arraignment had been delayed because prosecutors did not know what happened to Seeley after she posted $25,000 bond after her arrest.
Seeley was later found in the Women's Correctional Facility in Grants on a parole violation for a drug trafficking conviction, court records indicate.
Because there is no time limit between indictment and arraignment and because prosecutors do not routinely search for defendants in Department of Corrections custody, the case lay dormant until her attorney, Joseph Riggs III, said he brought the matter to the state's attention.
Prosecutors say they then attempted to have Seeley arraigned in November, but Riggs asked to delay the arraignment until after the holidays because his client was concerned she would be transported to the Metropolitan Detention Center for the hearing and then languish there for weeks over the holidays until she was returned to the Grants prison.
Riggs said the case against his client is yet another sad chapter in an already damaged life.
Court records indicate that Seeley was the product of a heroin-addicted mother and that she herself had alcohol and drug addictions and diagnoses of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Seeley, court records state, was also a teenage mother who lost her youngest son in a car crash. She was also molested by her grandfather as a child and raped by former Albuquerque police Officer Christopher Chase as an adult in 2002.
For the latter, Seeley won a nearly $1 million lawsuit against Chase and the city of Albuquerque in 2005.
Money, apparently, had not bought her happiness.
On the day of the crash, Seeley told police she downed a pint of vodka and a handful of anti-anxiety medication and drove off, court records state.
She also told police she wanted to kill herself and that she "didn't want to hurt anyone."
