NORFOLK, Va. — A woman has been sentenced to more than 12 years after pleading guilty to the DUI manslaughter of a Hampton Roads trans rights activist following a wrong-way Downtown Tunnel crash late last year.
27-year-old Dominique Goodwin was sentenced on Tuesday to serve 12 years and four months in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated involuntary manslaughter.
In the early morning hours of Dec. 30, 2023, Virginia State Police (VSP) say Goodwin was driving in Portsmouth after a night of drinking. At some point, she turned the wrong way onto a one-way road. From there, she continued driving east toward Norfolk into the westbound side of the Downtown Tunnel.
Halfway through the tunnel, then in Norfolk city limits, Goodwin crashed head-on into another vehicle, killing the driver on impact. That driver was Shelby Riddick-Walker, better known to the community as Lexus or Lex. She was a prominent member of and advocate for Hampton Roads' LGBTQ+ community.
Medics pronounced Riddick-Walker dead at the scene and took Goodwin to a nearby hospital for treatment.
After the crash, investigators obtained a search warrant for Goodwin's hospital records. They found that medical personnel had determined her blood alcohol content to be 0.22 — nearly three times the driving limit — less than an hour after the fatal crash. Investigators also found an empty liquor bottle inside Goodwin's car. Toxicology experts did not find alcohol in Riddick-Walker's blood.
Goodwin's trial was set to begin Wednesday, but she entered an agreement on Tuesday to plead guilty as charged and be sentenced to serve 12 years and four months in jail. That agreement also detailed she would have another seven years and eight months be suspended on the condition that she forfeit her driver's license and complete five years of uniform good behavior and three years of supervised probation after her release.
The judge overseeing her case accepted Goodwin's plea agreement and sentenced her per the agreement.
"Dominique Goodman made the decision to drink hard and drive. Ms. Goodwin killed Shelby Riddick-Walker, a beloved mentor to many in the trans community," said Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney Ramin Fatehi. "Shelby did nothing to deserve her death, and we lost the light of her work too soon. Ms. Goodwin will now serve a long sentence in prison. I hope that Ms. Goodwin's acceptance of responsibility and measure of accountability offer some closure to Shelby's family and friends. We will continue to prosecute the people who kill our neighbors, whether with guns or cars."
