Maryland families, law enforcement demand tougher DUI laws for repeat offenders

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (7News) — Three to four times each week, Tamar Weinsweig makes the roughly 20-minute drive from her home in Poolesville, Maryland, to be with her daughter Raphaela at a place no parent should ever have to visit a child.

Her destination is the Garden of Remembrance memorial park cemetery in Clarksburg.

Raphaela Weinsweig died April 18 from injuries sustained in a head-on car crash. She was 26.

“Raphaela was a bundle of fun. She was a goofball. She liked to prank everybody around her. She was loving; she was caring. It was really cool to see her develop into the young woman that she became,” Weinsweig told 7News in a recent interview.

Raphaela, the youngest of Tamar Weinsweig’s three daughters, worked as a preschool teacher and had aspirations to become a nurse, like her mother.

On March 15, she and her longtime boyfriend, Zack Ugaz, went to a party in separate cars. Raphaela Weinsweig, who was not under the influence of alcohol according to police, left first, eventually driving southbound on a two-lane stretch of Woodfield Road in rural Gaithersburg, Montgomery County. It was late. Almost 1:30 in the morning.

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According to police, a Ford F-150 driven by Jorge Moran Hernandez, 39, was barreling toward Raphaela’s Jeep from the other direction in excess of 80 mph. Hernandez had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .28%, more than three times the legal limit of 0.08%. Hernandez, driving northbound, crossed the center line and slammed into Raphaela’s Jeep head-on, according to police.

The Jeep Grand Cherokee Rapahaela Weinsweig was driving on March 15, 2026 was severely damaged at impact. (Montgomery County Police)

Hernandez, a father of four from Guatemala, died at the crash site. Attempts to reach his family for comment were unsuccessful.

Tamar Weinsweig woke to find a crash alert on her phone. Zack, Raphaela’s boyfriend, called with the news.

“He said she was in a car crash. ‘She’s at Suburban Hospital. Come now,’” Tamar Weinsweig recalled. “And I didn’t really get it until I got in the car and Jodi, who was Zack’s mom, said, ‘Tamar, she’s on a ventilator.’ As a nurse, I know what it means.”

Tamar Weinsweig pushed for Raphaela to be transferred to the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, where doctors did everything they could to keep her alive. She had a severe laceration of her liver and her spleen, Tamar Weinsweig said. She pleaded with doctors to “throw the kitchen sink” at her daughter.

“From that moment on, it was fight, fight, fight, fight, fight,” Tamar said.

26-year-old Raphaela Weinsweig died April 18, 2026, from injuries sustained during a March 15 crash in Montgomery County, Maryland. The driver of the vehicle that hit Weinsweig had a lengthy history of alcohol-related arrests. (Tamar Weinsweig)

After four weeks, it became clear the extent of Raphaela’s injuries was so severe she would never be able to have a meaningful life.

On April 18, more than a month after the crash, Raphaela Weinsweig died.

“She took two breaths, and then I knew. And then she passed,” Tamar Weinsweig said, choking back tears. “She was peaceful and she was loved, surrounded by a lot of love.”

Two days after Raphaela’s death, while her family sat shiva, the traditional Jewish period of mourning, Tamar Weinsweig began to learn more about Jorge Moran Hernandez, the man who’d been driving the truck that hit her daughter.

The troubling evidence of his past, it turned out, was strewn about the site of the fatal crash. A neighbor the next morning found papers scattered in the grass from Hernandez’s vehicle, documents from a 2024 sentencing hearing in Montgomery County Circuit Court.

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In February 2023, Maryland State Police found Hernandez on Rockledge Drive, Montgomery County, passed out behind the wheel of his Honda Civic and stopped in the roadway. Two opened beer cans were in the cup holders in the center console, according to a police report of the incident.

Hernandez refused to take a breathalyzer test but failed a field sobriety test and was placed under arrest for driving while under the influence. The Maryland State Police trooper discovered Hernandez’s license was suspended with “6 prior DUIs and alcohol restrictions.”

When he was sentenced in December 2024 for what would then be his 7th drunk driving offense, Hernandez received a 10-year sentence, but nine of those years were suspended.

Maryland is one of only three states without a felony DUI law, so ultimately Hernandez was eligible for parole after serving just a quarter of his one-year-sentence. He was released after 91 days of incarceration and given five years of supervised probation.

Jorge Moran Hernandez, 39, died at the scene on March 15, 2026. Hernandez, who’d been driving drunk and speeding, according the a Montgomery County Police report of the incident, crossed a center line and collided with a Jeep driven by Raphaela Weinsweig, who died weeks later. The 7-News I-Team discovered Hernandez had eight prior drunk driving cases prior to the March 15 fatal crash. (Maryland State Police)

“If he was incarcerated at the time, yeah, it would have stopped him,” said Officer Jayme Derbyshire, a Montgomery County Police Officer for 23 years.

Derbyshire has spent the past 13 years in the traffic division, where she’s advocated for tougher penalties for repeat drunk drivers.

“They had suspended his license or revoked his license based on prior convictions, so he shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. I think there was effort there, but it just wasn’t enough,” she said.

After his arrest in 2023 and eventual sentencing in December 2024, Hernandez was ordered to “totally abstain from alcohol,” seek counseling through group therapy and attend a victim impact panel.

None of those parole requirements worked.

On Jan.18, 2026, just before 2:00 a.m. Frederick City Police approached Hernandez’s parked vehicle in a strip mall parking lot, only to find him posing as if he was a passenger. According to police, Hernandez, who was alone in the vehicle, had been driving erratically before pulling into the parking lot and acting as if he was asleep.

The 7News I-Team obtained bodycam footage of a January 18, 2026, traffic stop in Frederick, Maryland, during which Jorge Moran Hernandez was cited for his 8th DUI, a violation of the conditions of his earlier parole from a December 2024 sentencing in Montgomery County. Officials were not aware of Hernandez’s January 18 arrest until after his death in a March 15 fatal crash. (Frederick Police Department)

“You been drinking?” an officer can be heard asking Hernandez on the bodycam footage, obtained by the 7News I-Team.

“Last night,” Hernandez replied.

Frederick City police cited Hernandez for driving drunk once again after he failed a field sobriety test. He was placed under arrest for what was then his eighth drunk driving offense, an arrest that put him in violation of his earlier probation.

Tamar Weinsweig, when asked about the extent of Hernandez’s criminal past behind the wheel, said she feels a mixture of “Anger, outrage [and] frustration.”

“Put them in rehab and don’t let them go. Don’t let them go until you are convinced, absolutely convinced that they will no longer do this. And if they’re going to do this again, you arrest them and they need to sit in jail,” she said.

According to court documents, Hernandez never showed up for the Feb. 24, 2026, preliminary hearing for his DUI in Frederick. Those same documents reveal he also never notified his parole officer about the new charges.

In May, prosecutors sought a warrant for Hernandez’s arrest for violating his parole and not showing up to court.

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On June 8, a judge signed an order for Hernandez’s arrest.

What nobody seemed to realize at that time- not the judge, not the Assistant State’s Attorney, not even Hernandez’s own parole officer- is that Hernandez was already dead.

The signed order for his arrest had come nearly three months after the March 15 fatal crash that killed both Hernandez and Raphaela Weinsweig.

That realization leaves Weinsweig with a host of troubling unanswered questions. Why did it take so long to get an arrest warrant? Why was Hernandez, after his eighth DUI arrest, back on the road so quickly?

The 7News I-Team sought interviews with Judge James A. Bonifant, who presided over Hernandez’s December 2024 sentencing when Hernandez received 91 days of incarceration, as well as Judge Carlos F. Acosta, who signed Hernandez’s arrest warrant nearly three months after Hernandez’s death. Both judges declined to be interviewed.

“The Maryland Judiciary generally cannot comment on pending or impending legal matters or the judge’s deliberative process. Judges are bound by ethical rules and legal principles preventing them from commenting on specific matters to preserve the impartiality and fairness of the judicial system,” a spokesperson told 7News in a statement.

The 7News I-Team also sought interviews from the State’s Attorneys in both Frederick and Montgomery Counties. Both declined.

“In the Moran Hernandez case, we can see that with each subsequent conviction, the penalty increased, and yet our community saw a tragic and heartbreaking outcome,” a spokesperson for the Montgomery County State’s Attorney told the I-Team in a statement.

The I-Team sought comment from the Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services, the agency responsible for monitoring any violations of his parole.

“Mr. Hernandez was cited by law enforcement on January 18, 2026, and the decision whether to detain or arrest him rested solely with the responding law enforcement department, which elected not to do so. As was required, the probation agent met monthly with Mr. Hernandez, including in January and February of 2026. During these in-person meetings, Mr. Hernandez was legally obligated to divulge his January 18 citation to the probation agent—but failed to do so. Had he done so, the agent would have immediately requested an arrest warrant for Mr. Hernandez,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement.

The agency went on to say that Hernandez “was scheduled for his next monthly meeting with his probation agent on March 18, 2026.” That meeting date was three days after the crash in which Hernandez was killed.

Hernandez, the agency stated, “had failed to disclose his arrest during his previous meetings.” Had he done so, the agency said an agent would have been able “to request an arrest warrant.”

None of that offers much comfort to Tamar Weinsweig, who can only visit her daughter at the cemetery.

“The only place where I could get any sort of relief was in the shower where I would just stand there and just scream my head off. That’s all I could do, because I don’t know what else to do,” Weinsweig said.