60 Year Sentence for Drunk Driver

GREGG COUNTY — Seven years after a Longview drunken driving wreck that killed two women, Jamie Lee Coker has been tried and sentenced on two counts of intoxication manslaughter and three counts of intoxication assault. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison. According to the Longview News-Journal, the 53-year-old had agreed to plead guilty to the charges in 2005, but days before his sentencing, the former construction worker skipped town, fleeing to Mexico. He was found this past summer, hiding in Cancun and was returned to Gregg County to be tried for his role in the deaths of his wife, Sonya Coker, and Martha Wallace, 74.

Coker was drunk when he and his wife left Mom’s Biker Bar a short time before the pickup he was driving crossed the median in the 4500 block of West Marshall Avenue and slammed into an oncoming car driven by Joe Wallace, killing his mother, Martha Wallace.