A Sonoma man has been ordered to spend 12 years and eight months in state prison for a high-speed DUI crash that killed a Sausalito driver and critically injured a passenger in January 2020, closing a case that crawled through years of competency hearings and state hospital treatment before ever reaching sentencing.
At Thursday's hearing in Santa Rosa, Judge Mark Urioste handed down the term and told defendant Abdulhadi Awad he had seen "no remorse," according to a press release from the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office. Prosecutors said they had pushed for the maximum sentence after Awad entered a guilty plea in 2020.
How the crash unfolded
The collision unfolded around 12:20 PM on January 26, 2020, when a BMW ran a red light and slammed into the side of a Subaru at Eighth Street East and East Napa Road in Sonoma, killing 35-year-old Jamie Narkunski and leaving passenger Natalie Weiss with critical injuries, according to The Press Democrat. Eyewitnesses and initial CHP reports described Awad being treated at Queen of the Valley Medical Center before he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence.
Competency fight and criminal history
What might have been a straightforward DUI sentencing turned into a long legal slog. The District Attorney's office says Awad was found incompetent to stand trial and was committed to a state hospital, only to be found restored to competency in December 2025. Prosecutors reported his blood-alcohol content at the time of the crash was 0.168, that he had a prior DUI conviction from 2003, and that he was on felony probation for a 2017 assault conviction when the 2020 wreck occurred. He had also been found not guilty by reason of insanity in a 2005 American Canyon case. Citing ongoing concerns about his mental health, the DA said it will ask the public guardian to pursue a "Murphy" conservatorship, according to the office's release.
Victim and aftermath
Narkunski was identified by the coroner and remembered by friends in Sausalito, while Weiss' injuries were initially described as life-threatening, The Press Democrat reported. Prosecutors say bystanders who saw the BMW driving erratically followed the car, and that Awad fled one collision shortly before he broadsided the Subaru at the Sonoma intersection.
Why the sentence matters
Prosecutors cast the nearly 13-year term as fitting, given the fatal crash, Awad's record, and the tangle of mental-health issues surrounding the case. Sonoma County has seen other high-profile DUI prosecutions where the District Attorney pursued stiff punishment, including a 2025 case that ended in a life sentence, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. Defense attorneys can still raise post-sentencing questions about competency or treatment, while the proposed conservatorship would move on a parallel civil track.
Awad will now be transferred to state prison to begin serving his term, and the DA's office says it will ask the public guardian to weigh conservatorship options. For Narkunski's family and friends, the sentence offers a measure of closure in a case that has stretched across much of this decade.
