A Houston man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison over a deadly crash that unfolded during a high-speed police chase. Yasmir Reyes received the sentence for the 2022 crash that killed a rideshare driver, bringing a long and painful legal saga toward a close.
The victim was Chaz Joubert, a 27-year-old rideshare driver who was killed in the crash. For his relatives, the sentencing handed down in court marked the moment they had been waiting on through years of grief and legal uncertainty.
Getting to this point was not straightforward. The case stretched across roughly four years and included a previous mistrial, forcing the family to relive the loss each time the proceedings were reset rather than resolved.
Speaking shortly after the sentencing, Joubert's mother described just how long and draining the road had been. She recalled four years of hearings, of seeing shackles in the courtroom and grieving the empty chairs, of cases being reset again and again until, as she put it, today it is finally over.
Her reaction was one of relief mixed with sorrow. She said she was glad it was over but that the day felt bittersweet, adding that with the case now closed in the courts, it would fall to the family to keep saying her son's name, vowing that they would always say Chaz Joubert.
She also described the anxiety of the day itself. Traveling from Louisiana for the proceedings, she said she woke up nervous and jittery, unsure what to expect and afraid of being disappointed by the courts once again, even as she longed for the ordeal to be over.
With the sentencing behind them, the family turned toward remembrance. She said they planned to visit the scene of the crash and leave a balloon on his cross, and that once the rest of the relatives came out of the courtroom, they would gather to say a prayer of thanks for having been held together through the past four years.