A Bexar County grand jury had previously charged Christopher Rey Navarro, 27, with murder in connection with a January 2024 wrong-way collision on Interstate 35 in San Antonio that killed Yulissa Valero, 26 [1]. The murder charge, which required proof of intentional or knowing conduct, proceeded to trial alongside manslaughter and four additional lesser charges in the 399th Criminal District Court before Judge Melisa Skinner [1].
The jury convicted Navarro on five counts, including manslaughter, and deadlocked on the top murder charge, which Judge Skinner declared a mistrial [1]. The split result reflects the evidentiary burden the prosecution faced in establishing the mental state necessary to elevate a DWI-related traffic fatality from manslaughter to murder under Texas law [1]. The jury returned its verdict and sentence on June 30, 2026 [1].
Judge Skinner sentenced Navarro to 18 years in prison on the manslaughter conviction the same day the verdict was returned, with all sentences to run concurrently [1]. The concurrent structure means the manslaughter term controls his confinement regardless of the sentences imposed on the four additional lesser counts [1].
The hung jury on the murder count leaves the state with the option to retry Navarro on that charge, though no retrial date has been reported [1]. The outcome tracks a pattern in Texas courts where intoxication-related fatality prosecutions strain the boundary between recklessness, the mental state for manslaughter, and the higher threshold of intentional or knowing conduct required for murder, a distinction that frequently produces split verdicts in wrong-way driving cases [1].