A previously convicted drunk driver who caused a multi-vehicle wreck while intoxicated in Coachella, killing a young man and seriously injuring his brother, is bound for state prison to serve 20 years to life, after a judge imposed the term required under California law. Antonio Tellez Leon, 41, of Coachella, was convicted in September of second-degree murder, four counts of driving under the influence resulting in great bodily injury and one count of driving on a suspended driver's licence for the 2023 collision that fatally injured 21-year-old Jacob Snellings, also of Coachella.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge F. Paul Dickerson imposed the sentence at a hearing at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta on Friday. Leon had been held without bail at the Byrd Detention Center ahead of sentencing, according to earlier court reporting. With the sentence now imposed, he was bound for state prison on Tuesday to begin serving the 20-years-to-life term.
The night of June 6, 2023
According to a trial brief filed by the Riverside County District Attorney's Office, Leon spent the afternoon of June 6, 2023 drinking wine at the home of his girlfriend, identified in court records only as “Dalila,” and also consumed methamphetamine. He left her home shortly after 8 p.m. and headed for his own, accelerating beyond the posted limit along Avenue 51 in Coachella and driving in the centre median when he came up behind a line of traffic, prosecutors said.
A sheriff's community services officer driving westbound saw Leon's BMW 325 speed past her eastbound and stopped to turn around to follow — but before she could complete the turn, she saw “a cloud of dust” on Avenue 51 at Chiapas Drive amid the sounds of a crash, the brief said. She immediately called for assistance, bringing several patrol units and paramedics to the scene.
Leon's BMW had smashed into the passenger side of a Toyota Camry driven by David L. Snellings, then 19, of Coachella. David suffered significant injuries and was taken in stable condition to Desert Regional Medical Center; he ultimately recovered. His older brother Jacob, 21, was pronounced dead at the scene. A Jeep Cherokee and a Honda Civic also sustained moderate damage in the wreck, but their occupants did not require hospitalisation.
What deputies found, and what Leon told them
Deputies found Leon sitting on the kerb, unable to hold his head up and slurring his speech, saying he had had a “long bad day” and wanted to sleep at home and could be taken to jail in the morning, the trial brief stated. He suffered a minor leg injury and was taken to Desert Regional Medical Center for treatment and examination. Deputies reported a “strong odor of alcohol”; blood and breath tests showed alcohol in his system and tests further revealed amphetamines, the brief said. The legal limit for driving in California is a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08.
Most damaging of all, prosecutors said, Leon acknowledged to deputies at the scene that he had just barely received a DUI conviction and was not supposed to be driving. He told deputies he could not recall anything about the collision except that a “blue car had stopped in front of him,” and said he had been distracted because he was on his cell phone with Dalila, according to the prosecution.
A warning he had already been given in court
The murder conviction rests on a history the jury heard in full. According to the District Attorney's trial brief, Leon pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour DUI in March 2023 and was admonished by the court about the dangers of driving under the influence — the formal warning California courts give DUI offenders that if they drive drunk again and kill someone, they can be charged with murder. He was then formally placed on probation for causing a hit-and-run collision in Palm Desert six months earlier. Roughly nine weeks after that plea, he drove drunk again, on a suspended licence, and Jacob Snellings was killed.
When Leon was first charged in 2023, City News Service reported that he pleaded not guilty to murder and the other charges at the Larson Justice Center in Indio, denied the sentence-enhancing allegations, and was held on $1 million bail at the John J. Benoit Detention Center in Indio, with the Riverside County coroner's office identifying the man killed as 21-year-old Jacob Snellings of Coachella. The case then worked its way through the courts for more than three years before September's guilty verdicts.
California prosecutors can charge a repeat DUI offender who kills someone with second-degree murder when the driver has already been formally warned — at an earlier DUI plea — that drunk driving can kill and can lead to a murder charge. That prior warning, and Leon's own admission at the scene that he knew he was not supposed to be driving, sat at the centre of this case.
What happens next
There is no further trial stage in this case: the September verdicts are final unless Leon appeals, and Judge Dickerson has now imposed the 20-years-to-life term the law required. Leon was bound for state prison on Tuesday to begin serving it. For the Snellings family of Coachella, the sentencing closes the court chapter of a case that began on Avenue 51 in June 2023 — with one son lost, another injured and recovered, and a driver who had been warned in a courtroom only weeks earlier heading to prison for at least two decades.
For readers who drive California's desert highways — including the many Punjabi truckers and route drivers who work the Coachella Valley and the I-10 corridor — the case is a stark statement of where the state's line now sits: a first DUI brings a warning read into the record, and a fatal crash after that warning is prosecuted, and sentenced, as murder.