An accused street racer on Tuesday, Jan. 28, became the second driver to go on trial for the Santa Ana crash that killed an Orange County Register editor more than four years ago.
Ricardo Tolento, 29, is facing felony vehicular-manslaughter and hit-and-run charges, as well as a misdemeanor charge of engaging in a speed contest, for his alleged role in the death of Gene Harbrecht, whose pickup truck was broadsided by a BMW driven by another driver while the editor was turning off of Bristol Street in the late morning of July 30, 2020.
Prosecutors say the fatal crash occurred during a street race between Tolento, driving an Infiniti, and Louie Robert Villa, the BMW driver, who was previously convicted in an earlier trial.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Brian Orue gives his opening statement during Ricardo Tolento’s trial in Santa Ana, CA on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Tolento is on trial for vehicular manslaughter and hit and run, along with a street racing enhancement. He is accused of racing Louie Robert Villa — the driver who struck and killed Gene Harbrecht — before fleeing the scene. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Alternate Defender Tom Nocella gives his opening statement during Ricardo Tolento’s trial in Santa Ana, CA on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Tolento is on trial for vehicular manslaughter and hit and run, along with a street racing enhancement. He is accused of racing Louie Robert Villa — the driver who struck and killed Gene Harbrecht — before fleeing the scene. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Defendant Ricardo Tolento and Alternate Defender Tom Nocella listen to opening statements during Tolento’s trial in Santa Ana, CA on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Tolento is on trial for vehicular manslaughter and hit and run, along with a street racing enhancement. He is accused of racing Louie Robert Villa — the driver who struck and killed Gene Harbrecht — before fleeing the scene. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Senior Deputy District Attorney Brian Orue gives his opening statement during Ricardo Tolento’s trial in Santa Ana, CA on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Tolento is on trial for vehicular manslaughter and hit and run, along with a street racing enhancement. He is accused of racing Louie Robert Villa — the driver who struck and killed Gene Harbrecht — before fleeing the scene. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Senior Deputy District Attorney Brian Orue shows a photo of Gene Harbrecht’s truck during opening statements at Ricardo Tolento’s trial in Santa Ana, CA on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Tolento is on trial for vehicular manslaughter and hit and run, along with a street racing enhancement. He is accused of racing Louie Robert Villa — the driver who struck and killed Gene Harbrecht — before fleeing the scene. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Alternate Defender Tom Nocella, left, and defendant Ricardo Tolento listen to opening statements during Tolento’s trial in Santa Ana, CA on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Tolento is on trial for vehicular manslaughter and hit and run, along with a street racing enhancement. He is accused of racing Louie Robert Villa — the driver who struck and killed Gene Harbrecht — before fleeing the scene. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Alternate Defender Tom Nocella, left, and defendant Ricardo Tolento listen to opening statements during Tolento’s trial in Santa Ana, CA on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Tolento is on trial for vehicular manslaughter and hit and run, along with a street racing enhancement. He is accused of racing Louie Robert Villa — the driver who struck and killed Gene Harbrecht — before fleeing the scene. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Gene Harbrecht
Show Caption1 of 8Senior Deputy District Attorney Brian Orue gives his opening statement during Ricardo Tolento’s trial in Santa Ana, CA on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Tolento is on trial for vehicular manslaughter and hit and run, along with a street racing enhancement. He is accused of racing Louie Robert Villa — the driver who struck and killed Gene Harbrecht — before fleeing the scene. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
ExpandA longtime editor at The Orange County Register — whose friends and colleagues remembered him as one put it a “newsman to his core” — Harbrecht was also serving as the national and international editor for the Southern California News Group that puts out the Register and 10 other newspapers.
During opening statements on Tuesday in a Santa Ana courtroom, Senior Deputy District Attorney Brian Orue told an Orange County Superior Court jury that Tolento helped set in motion the events that led to Harbrecht’s death.
“Gene Harbrecht is dead because two individuals decided they were going to turn Bristol Street, here in Santa Ana, into their own personal race track,” Orue told jurors.
Alternate Defender Tom Nocella denied that Tolento had taken part in a street race or that he was responsible for the 67-year-old Harbrecht’s death.
“It was Mr. Villa who caused the accident,” Nocella said. “It was Mr. Villa who was speeding in the street.”
Dashboard camera footage, captured from a vehicle that was waiting behind Villa and Tolento’s cars at a traffic light at Bristol and 17th streets, appears to show two vehicles quickly speed off northbound on Bristol as soon as the light turned green, quickly outpacing surrounding traffic.
Investigators later estimated that over an approximately half-mile stretch Tolento is suspected of driving at an average speed of 77 mph in a 45-mph zone.
The prosecutor said Tolento was winning the race until Villa “slingshotted around him” — crashing into Harbrecht’s pickup, which was turning onto Santa Clara Avenue.
The force of the collision demolished the front end of Villa’s BMW and shoved Harbrecht’s pickup off of the roadway, onto a sidewalk and into a fence. A bystander broke through the windshield to pull Harbrecht from the wreckage.
Harbrecht died minutes later.
Tolento drove around the wreckage and took off, the prosecutor said. In a call with a 911 operator, Tolento reported the crash but gave no indication he had been involved.
Officers identified Tolento’s vehicle from the dashboard footage captured by the other driver, authorities said. He was pulled over and arrested hours later on First Street near Raitt Street.
Speaking to an officer after his arrest, Tolento denied having been near the crash, saying he had been running errands, going to a church, getting a Covid test and at a tire shop. Asked point blank what he would say if he was told that police had a video of him racing, Tolento replied, “I wouldn’t know what to say,” Nocella, the defense attorney told jurors.
Nocella acknowledged that Tolento had been in the Infiniti that was caught on video at Bristol and 17th. But Nocella said there was no evidence that Tolento and Villa knew each other, that they had ever communicated, that they planned to race or that a race had taken place.
Villa, arrested at the crash scene, had been driving with a blood-alcohol level more than double the legal limit. Because Villa had a previous DUI conviction and had received a formal warning during that process about the dangers of drunk driving — known as a Watson Advisement — he was convicted of second-degree murder, rather than the lesser charge of vehicular manslaughter that Tolento is facing.
During a 2022 sentencing, Villa apologized and was embraced by the newsman’s widow after being sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
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