Teen Pleads Not Guilty in Deadly Crash She Live-Streamed as Attorney Says She 'Feels ... Terrible'

A California teen who live-streamed her alleged drunken crash in a field last week, which killed her little sister, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday

By

Adam Carlson

and KC Baker

Published on July 26, 2017 07:05PM EDT

A California teen who live-streamed her alleged drunken crash in a field last week, which killed her little sister and injured another passenger, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday, PEOPLE confirms.

Obdulia Sanchez, 18, was arraigned Wednesday afternoon in Merced County, California, court records show. She is charged with multiple felonies in connection with a wreck Friday night that left her 14-year-old sister, Jacqueline Sanchez, dead.

According to prosecutors, the counts against Obdulia include one count of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, an alternative count of gross vehicular manslaughter, two counts of driving under the influence resulting in injury and two counts of driving with a blood-alcohol level of .08 percent causing injury, with great bodily injury allegations for all four vehicle code violations.

Obdulia faces a maximum sentence of 13 years and eight months in prison if convicted on all charges, authorities say. Court and jail records show she remains in custody in Merced County on $560,000 bail.

Her defense attorney, Ramnik Samrao, tells PEOPLE that Obdulia will always feel “morally responsible” for the crash, separate from the accusations she now faces. He cautioned against a rush to judgment based on the video footage from the incident that she posted online, and he stressed that it was early in the process as he continues to gather information about what happened.

He says there is reason to believe that Obdulia called 911 and tried to flag down cars for help after the wreck.

“The main thing that I want people to know is that — most people have seen this video and they just have this reaction on the kind of person she is based on this little clip into her life when they don’t know anything about her,” Samrao said.

Speaking to reporters following Obdulia’s hearing, Samrao said his client “feels absolutely terrible,” but he questioned whether a crime had occurred, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We don’t know that she was drunk,” he said. “That’s the allegation.”

“She does obviously feel terrible and she’s trying to deal with it in the way that she can,” he tells PEOPLE.

In a statement, Merced’s Chief Deputy District Attorney Harold Nutt took a different view, saying, “The behavior demonstrated both prior to and after the incident, as documented by the defendant’s own recording, is disturbing and shocking.”

He added, “The Merced County District Attorney’s Office will do everything in its power to see that justice is done in this matter.” (A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office declined further comment.)

Nutt said after Wednesday’s arraignment that Obdulia’s blood-alcohol level at the time of the wreck was allegedly .10 and he described her live video as showing “some depravity and some stupidity,” the Times reports.

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According to a California Highway Patrol report obtained by PEOPLE, Obdulia was driving with Jacqueline and another 14-year-old girl in the back seat on Friday about 6:40 p.m. in Los Banos, California, when she lost control of her vehicle — ejecting the other girls, who were not wearing seat belts.

When her 2003 Buick veered onto the shoulder, Obdulia overcorrected and swerved back across the road, blowing through a barbed wire fence into a field and flipping over, according to the report, which states that “alcohol is believed to be a factor in this collision.”

Obdulia was streaming live video of herself to social media before the crash and then apparently resumed filming soon after, according to footage that has been posted online.

Her relatives confirmed that she recorded the video, according to local TV station KFSN, and the prosecutor’s office noted the live-stream in a news release on Wednesday.

Obdulia’s video appears to show her driving down the highway while she raps along to a song playing in her car before then careening off the road, as screams are heard in the background. She is then seen kneeling beside her mortally wounded sister on the ground.

She speaks calmly at first in the video and then grows increasingly emotional. “Hey, everybody, if I go to f—— jail for life, you already know why,” she says.

Aiming the camera at her sister’s motionless and bloody body, Obdulia says, “My sister is f—— dying. Look, I f—— love my sister to death. I don’t give a f—. Man, we about to die. This is the last thing I wanted to happen to us, but it just did.”

Then she says, “Jacqueline, please wake up.”

The girls’ father later spoke out to local media, telling KFSN, “I don’t know how to feel. My one daughter killed my other daughter.”

“I think she doesn’t know what happened,” he said of Obdulia. “What I think is she knows she’s done something wrong. Because she knows, and that’s what I feel. She feels bad for herself, but she killed her own sister.”

Manuela Seja, the teen who was with Obdulia and Jacqueline, has also spoken out, telling local media outlets that she doesn’t “blame anybody” for the crash.

Seja, who suffered trauma to her leg in the wreck, reportedly said they were on their way back to the Sanchez home in Stockton, California, after Obdulia picked her up. She said she and Jacqueline had been dating after meeting seven months earlier.

Jacqueline and Obdulia are two of four siblings, according to the Times.

Of Jacqueline, Seja reportedly said, “She wasn’t like everybody else. She was just funny and she would be funny. She didn’t even need to try.”