It’s a classic legal drama trope: Someone sets aside their notes in court and speaks from the heart.
Few expect it to happen in real life, especially not in the unglamorous courtrooms of San Francisco’s decaying Hall of Justice. But on Aug. 27, it did.
Nicky Garcia, the driver responsible for a deadly hit-and-run nine years ago, dropped the statement he’d prepared to read, stood and turned to face the loved ones of the woman he’d killed.
Heather Miller had gone on an evening bike ride through Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach on June 22, 2016. She’d invited her husband to come along, her father Peyton Miller recalled in court, but he said he’d just meet her at home. He never did.
Garcia, driving a white Honda Fit, struck the 41-year-old Miller near John F. Kennedy Drive and 30th Avenue after swerving to avoid another car, witnesses later testified. They watched him speed away with a shattered windshield.
At the time, Garcia was charged with first and second degree murder, vehicular manslaughter, hit-and-run, and auto burglary. He was 19.
“You left my daughter laying in the road like a dead animal,” said Peyton Miller, addressing the now 28-year-old Garcia in court nine years later. Four of Miller’s supporters addressed the court one by one, approaching San Francisco Superior Court Judge Bruce Chan to read statements they’d written and collected from others.
Several asked Chan to give Garcia the maximum sentence. “No punishment is enough,” said one of Miller’s former coworkers. “Even a life sentence is still a life,” said her childhood best friend.
Throughout, Garcia’s composure did not break until his mother, a small, weary woman named Joy Manzano, addressed Miller’s family.
“I have watched my son change,” she said softly, reaching for tissues. “I have seen him humbled and broken and changed into a better human being.”
Garcia, sitting beside his attorneys with a plastic bag of his belongings, looked away, his eyes red. Then he stood and faced the loved ones of the woman he’d killed.
“Everything changed once you guys started talking,” the 28-year-old said, dropping the letter he’d prepared to read. The courtroom was completely still.
“I have dishonored my family,” Garcia said. He began to sob. “This is not an act. I’m not here to beg for mercy. I’m here to beg for your forgiveness.”
People on both sides of the courtroom began to cry.
“I think about how much you must hate me,” Garcia continued. “When I look into your faces, I see pure hurt, not hatred, and I must make amends to that.”
A man sitting in the back of the courtroom and wearing a T-shirt with an emblem of the sheriff’s office wiped his eyes.
Victim was ‘vivacious’ Southerner with sharp sense of humor
Legal complications drew out Garcia’s case. In September 2024, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harry Jacobs arranged a deal that allowed Garcia to plead guilty to all charges but receive a 15-year sentence for only the lesser crimes of vehicular homicide, leaving the scene of an accident, and auto burglary.
After the district attorney’s objection, the deal was dropped. The DA filed a motion to dismiss the vehicular homicide charge, forcing Garcia to answer to first and second-degree murder charges.
Almost a year later, a new agreement was reached to sentence Garcia on the second-degree murder felony, which is punishable by 15 years to life in state prison.
The courtroom was clearly divided on the day of Garcia’s sentencing hearing, with Miller’s loved ones seated on the left. They remembered the “vivacious” woman they’d lost.
Miller began playing piano when she was 15. Three years later, she was off to the University of North Carolina, Asheville, to get a degree in piano performance. More degrees followed: a master’s degree in musicology at the University of Tennessee and a doctorate at the University of Maryland in ethnomusicology. She went on to teach courses on the history of rock ‘n’ roll.
“Oh, you play the washboard?” one friend remembered joking when she met Miller. “Bless your heart, dear, that and the spoons,” Miller responded in her sweet Southern drawl.
Miller had a sharp sense of humor, her relatives said. She and her older brother, he wrote to the court, had joked about launching his ashes from a cannon at his funeral while Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” played.
Miller moved to San Francisco when she met the “love of her life,” Ian Bateen, her father said. They married in San Francisco City Hall. After Heather’s death, Peyton Miller continued, Bateen began drinking, put on weight and died of a heart attack in 2019.
“You fought to keep [Garcia] out of prison and lengthened our pain,” said Peyton Miller, looking at Garcia’s supporters seated on the right side of the courtroom. “You can visit him. We can’t visit our daughter.”
Peyton Miller also criticized the court for the lengthy process. He raised a stack of case notes he’d been taking down since 2020 and said he’d lost faith in the judicial system.
Chan recognized the grieving father’s frustration. “I know you’re a man of God,” he said. “We’re aware of our fallibility.” The judge added that he’d been careful to balance delivering swift justice and making a decision that could “run the risk of compounding harm with another harm.”
In jail, Garcia became a ‘leader’ in restorative justice
Jail staff and volunteers who’d worked with Garcia described the growth he’d undertaken despite limited opportunities while in custody.
“It is hard to program in jail with lockdowns and lack of access,” said Joanna Hernandez, the director of strategic partnerships at the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project.
Garcia, she said, made an effort to participate in restorative justice circles, share his feelings and support his family, even when he was first incarcerated as a teenager among older men. He’d never been to jail before.
Terye Lewis, the director of programs and reentry at Five Keys, said Garcia became a leader in his restorative justice unit. Garcia said deputies told him his 44 “milestones,” each earned for every 60 hours of jail programming completed, were the most they’d ever seen one inmate earn.
“Jail is a violent environment,” said Theo Yang, a Ph.D candidate at Stanford University and volunteer teacher at the jail. Garcia, he said, has been incarcerated for longer than the teaching team has been around.
Garcia’s “long-overdue apology” that day in court concluded with a quote from Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychologist and Holocaust survivor. “Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning,” Garcia said to Miller’s family. “You guys are my meaning.”
Judge Chan sentenced Garcia to prison for 15 years to life with credit for the nine years he’d served. This week, Garcia said over the phone from San Francisco County Jail No. 3, he will likely be transferred to state prison.
He maintained what he’d said in court: “I promised Heather,” Garcia said. “I see her in my dreams. I will build every brick back by myself.”
“No punishment is enough,”
What garbage. It’s terrible that he left the scene but he was 19, swerved to avoid a car and got into an accident – and made a huge mistake that will cost him 1/4 of his life behind bars while lifelong criminals go free and a convicted felon is President. He failed to stop. He probably would have gotten off without charges if he had, because it was AN ACCIDENT. But this kind of sentiment from cyclists who routinely blow stop signs without second thoughts but are ‘outraged’ when things go badly for one of them, ‘no punishment is enough’ – that’s equally garbage and a mistake itself. Wrong.
I just watched an electric scooter blow a red light and almost get peeled, 5 minutes ago. If the driver of that car hadn’t been so extra careful and stop regardless of the green, “no punishment would have been enough” again? Please. One tragedy becomes two becomes political BS with sentiments like that. Get real about the real world and stop playing the victim as if this 19 year old looked someone in the eye and shot them instead of swerving to avoid an accident, creating another.
The whole thing sucks. Making it worse by being dishonest about what happened and pretending it was intentional, that’s just crass and unnecessary. Leaving the scene of an accident is terrible and a crime, he will pay the cost. It’s not murder. Get real, live in reality.
Indeed the insatiable thirst for vengeance is garbage, and 15 years imprisoned is more than enough.
But it’s also garbage to blame the victim. How the heck is this cyclist killed in 2016 responsible for the reckless scooter kid you saw yesterday?
Speaking of “the real world” and of honesty about what happened, the article has a helpful link to this previous piece about details of this actual case:
https://www.sfweekly.com/archives/new-details-emerge-in-golden-gate-park-hit-and-run-that-killed-bicyclist/article_b7d2b64a-92ac-520e-a3e4-1c1e0772e592.html
There’s zero indication that Heather Miller did anything wrong at all, or that there was a stop sign anywhere in sight. Indeed, the driver was speeding wildly — a choice he made long before the fatal swerve, and which made it extremely likely that *something* bad would happen.
Claims of “60mph” are bunk without actual evidentiary substantiation. It doesn’t take even 20mph to cave in the windshield or “catapult” an impact victim into the air, especially if elevated on a bicycle. Further the impact speed can be calculated by the distance the impacted victim travels after impact – the admittedly “shaken up” witness who gave an initial statement didn’t have that information which would later be provided by scene investigators. But it doesn’t matter – a head on crash at 20mph (+ speed of victim added in opposite direction) would have quite very likely been equally fatal. So once he had swerved to avoid the vehicle in front, then swerved again to avoid oncoming traffic without seeing the cyclist directly ahead, speed wasn’t itself realistically the deciding factor. Also there was no speed enforcement going on at the location and time. Lowering the ‘official’ speed limit would have had zero effect on someone recklessly disregarding the rules of the road, just as stop signs and red lights are recklessly disregarded by cyclists routinely. The rules can be made as strict as ‘studies from Amsterdam’ seem to mandate, but that does absolutely nothing without enforcement and instead may reduce traffic flows, causing traffic situations that induce frustration that leads to poor decisions. People driving slowly looking for parking, unable to park, pulling out of parking spaces without looking, all of these are real world potential factors for accidents to happen.
No one to my reading implied Miller did anything wrong. I agree with you that speeding in general makes situations less safe, but you can’t affect speeding by simply putting up a sign and expecting that by hindering local traffic you’re having any effect at all on the 1% of crazy people, drunks, road racers or any other dangerous driver. Reality requires enforcement of existing laws, not just more and more regulations of those already following them.
Multiple witnesses say he was driving recklessly, and 60 mph was mentioned by several witnesses. Garcia was bipping cars in GGP and the Honda fit was stolen, When spotted he fled, ran a stop sign, hit heather mills while fleeing down JFK. Car was then abandoned at the angler’s club and Garcia and his accomplice fled.
You might read a little more before drawing conclusions.
Several witnesses can guess, that’s fine, but as far as a court process it means nothing when confronted with the evidence and physics as presented by an expert. The point was missed upon you – without enforcement laws mean basically nothing at all, but you keep pushing more laws against the law abiding as if that does anything at all. Well, the most deaths ever happened last year despite millions and millions wasted, so what now? More war on cars, or are you actually trying to keep people safe?
It’s too late to do anything good by the time a driver kills someone. We need to take unsafe driving seriously even when no one is injured, and have serious but appropriate consequences, such as license suspensions.
How are you going to do that without SFPD doing the job of writing tickets?
“Jail is a violent environment.” And yet here he is, alive and well.
With, at most, only 6 years left to go and then he will be FREE.
It’s convenient for city institutions to put all the blame on the driver, but SFDPW, SFPD and SFFD bear some responsibility. They continue to favor speed over the safety of vulnerable road users. The annual death toll on the streets of San Francisco continues in spite of proclamations of “vision zero”. SFDPW treat the vulnerable road users as if they are the ones who should be minding the cars, rather than forcing cars to drive safely with their infrastructure. The city put locks on their doors at night, but don’t apply the same lesson to their roads: Yes, someone can break a lock, but they are a lot more effective than a sign “Don’t open the door” = “Speed limit 25mph”.
Speed was not a factor in this accident. I may agree with you about vision zero millions wasted but lowering the speed limit to 20 will not prevent deaths, and it underscores the issue that speed limits only apply to people who follow traffic rules in a city with minimal and decreasing traffic enforcement except by camera. SFPD used to write tickets, now they don’t really. This corresponds with the uptick in injuries and fatalities more than anything else. Speed limits going down does virtually nothing, and the ‘studies of Amsterdam’ and other places that the traffic nerds and wonks point to don’t apply for a damn here. Bring back law enforcement if you want laws enforced – additional infraction law isn’t going to do that.
You are missing my point and saying exactly what I’m saying: Speed limit signs are a waste of metal. The physical infrastructure determines the speed at which motor vehicles can move. For a century, traffic engineers have designed to maximize vehicle speed, rather than pedestrian safety. Big wide roads, with large turning radii and few obstructions allow vehicle speeds far in excess of what is safe. I’d agree that law enforcement would work if those who designed the street for excessive speed would also get arrested for endangering the public.
“The physical infrastructure determines the speed at which motor vehicles can move.”
Is bullshit and proven wrong already.
I meant to say speed limits are not a factor. Obviously speed plays a role in any collision, but you won’t lower them for the 1% of reckless drivers by putting up a sign or lowering them arbitrarily for the population following the rules of the road already. Without enforcement it’s just WalkSF BS, trying to make itself relevant at every single tragedy even where traffic laws and street layouts are completely unrelated to reality – like the accident in West Portal. Making it impossible to make a left turn on West Portal saves zero lives. Zero. One has nothing to do with the other. Without enforcement, any sign is just a suggestion.
If Garcia really did make the fatal maneuver to avoid hitting another car, then I think many people would understand that, at that moment in time, he had no option that was harmless. Either he hits the other car or he hits the cyclist. A nightmare of a decision that has to made in a split second. And of course that other driver might have been the real culprit but he/she just vanished.
But Garcia then drove off and that is what did for him here. Rule number one in an accident is that you stay at the scene and try and help the other party. He would be a free man today if he had done that. As it is he has 6 more years to serve. At least he does sound genuinely contrite.
It took nine years to resolve this case. That’s another story. He essentially serves his sentence in county jail.
What about the auto burglary? The link to the SF Weekly article put the whole incident in context. It was more the an accident, He is likely to be considered eligible for parole almost immediately.
I remember the day Heather was killed. I used to ride by the spot she was killed on JFK every day I went to work. Another cyclist was killed that day as well, both killed by speeding motorists. Let’s hope Garcia is able to continue to improve as a person and Heather’s family and friends can forgive him.
Charging with first degree murder, as in premeditated murder, seems absurd. Most motorists who kill someone are never charged with anything.
Most people are killed in accidents. If there’s a contributing illegal factor like DUI or provable reckless driving, they get charged all the time.
“Accidents”? Perhaps you mean crashes? Dead is dead. Most people are killed by a series of poor decisions by the driver. Bad driving is endemic to the US where a drivers license is amazingly easy to acquire. How many DUI arrests does the SFPD make? More or less than the CHP makes in San Francisco. “they get charged all the time.” They may get charged more often than “accidents”, but they are not charged “…all the time”. Not by a long shot. Killing someone with your car is the least likely death to be charged.
It was an accident.
This is a terrible story. I am sorry for the cyclist and her family and sorry for the driver.
As I parent, I sympathize with the victim’s father saying things that sound vengeful and not especially constructive. Even those of us who believe deeply in mercy and redemption and don’t see incarceration as a solution to nearly any problem can surely imagine that it might be hard to continue to espouse those beliefs coolly and rationally after losing a child.
As a citizen of San Francisco, I am furious that city and state leaders are not doing more about reckless driving. I am happy to hear there is some evidence that the driver in this case has matured over the last 9 years and will likely not drive so recklessly again. But there are hundreds of other drivers running stop signs (as he did), driving too fast (as he did) , running red lights, making turns without checking everywhere they should check, and doing other inconsiderate and dangerous things.
No rule or punishment can stop all of them, sure. But neither SF nor CA DMV is doing enough.
Half the drivers roaming the streets of San Francisco are potential murderers.
Murder requires intent.
While, I was against closing the Great High Way to Traffice, I’m think Golden Gate park, should be closed to cars. I can’t understand, why Garcia felt the need to speed to such a beautiful park? He’s only sorry because he has to go to jail.
His interests are not important. He was a criminal. The point is that the signs didn’t stop him from driving recklessly, only enforcement would ever do that. Punishing everyday drivers because 1% are lawless nutjobs is entirely stupid.
I’m not sure anyone is proposing “punishing everyday drivers” who don’t break traffic rules. Perhaps some traffic-safety folks support speed limits others may consider punitive. But many traffic-safety advocates (like me for example) would be very happy with only more consistent enforcement of rules we already have on the books. Certainly, some drivers will run stops signs or red lights sometimes even if/when the risk of them getting a ticket for it is higher than it is in San Francisco today. (People driving stolen cars probably don’t care about tickets written by camera plate-readers. Some people will run the risk anyway.) But many (I’d say most) drivers will stop doing these things or at least do them more judiciously if enforcement becomes more consistent again. Just that could save a lot of injuries and lives.