Man sentenced in wreck that killed High Point woman

TRIAD — A Winston-Salem man has been sentenced to more than 26 years in prison after pleading guilty to murder and other charges in a 2023 drunken-driving wreck that killed four people, including a woman from High Point.

Pedro Alfonzo Perez Galdamez, 52, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Forsyth County Superior Court to four counts of second-degree murder, four counts of felony death by motor vehicle and driving while impaired.

Galdamez had spent several hours drinking at a bar before starting to drive home about 3 a.m. on April 16, 2023. He started out driving his 2010 Honda Accord south on U.S. 52 but at some point turned around and drove north in the southbound lanes, where the Accord collided head-on with a 2016 Nissan Sentra driven by Blanca Estela Castillo Bernal, 60, of High Point. The wreck killed Bernal and all three of her passengers, who were from Winston-Salem: Santa Hernandez Bernadino, 46; Estefania Hernandez, 32; and Gregoria Noyola Jimenez, 64.

Galdamez had minor injuries.

Toxicology reports later found that Galdamez had a blood-alcohol level of 0.26% at the time of the crash, which is more than three times the legal limit on 0.08% for drivers in North Carolina, according to a press release from the Forsyth County District Attorney's Office.

At the scene of the wreck, Galdamez initially identification with the name Giovany Alarcon Ruiz. Police determined that Galdamez had come into the United States and used the false name for nearly two decades, the press release said. At his house, officers found a passport and identification card issued from El Salvador in 2017 bearing the name Pedro Alfonzo Perez Galdamez.

Galdamez had never had been properly licensed to drive in the U.S.

Authorities have identified body parts found in a freezer earlier this year in Colorado as belonging to a teenager who went missing nearly two decades ago. The Mesa County Sheriff's Office confirmed that the remains are those of Amanda Leariel Overstreet, who had not been seen since April 2005. Her head and hands were discovered in a freezer at a home in Grand Junction, about 240 miles west of Denver, in January. Overstreet was the biological daughter of the home's previous owners. The remains were found when the new owners, who had recently purchased and remodeled the home, attempted to give away the freezer. Investigators have emphasized that the current owners are not connected to the case. Overstreet's disappearance had never been formally reported, and the case remains under investigation, according to the sheriff's office.