Last March a 40-year-old advertising executive and his entire family were killed in San Francisco while waiting at a bus stop.
Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, a globally lauded creative director who was behind groundbreaking advertising for brands including Apple, Bodyform and Ikea, died on March 16 at the age of 40.
Oliveira, a native of Brazil, died along with his partner, Matilde Ramos Pinto, and their two children, Joaquim and Cauê, after a crash in the West Portal neighborhood of San Francisco. The family were waiting at a bus stop when a car struck the shelter.
The details of the story are even more tragic than they sound. It was the couple’s anniversary and they were waiting for the bus to take their young children to the zoo for the day.
Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, 40, and Joaquin Ramos Pinto de Oliveira, 1, were killed on impact when the SUV struck the transit shelter where they were waiting in front of the West Portal Branch Library. Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto, 38, and infant Cauê Ramos Pinto de Oliveira were hospitalized and died in the days after.
The person responsible for killing this entire family is Mary Fong Lau, a 78-year-old woman who was driving her Mercedes the wrong way on the street and then, according to an accident report, confused the gas pedal and the break and accelerated into the bus stop. However that wasn’t the story she told investigators later on.
The woman accused of striking and killing a family of four in San Francisco’s West Portal neighborhood in March told an eyewitness immediately after the crash that she had tried to brake but “accidentally moved (her) foot onto the gas pedal,” according to court records…
In the aftermath of the crash, Lau, 78, told investigators she was delivering food to her brother when she claimed “there was a malfunction with the vehicle which caused the vehicle to suddenly accelerate at a high rate of speed,” according to the report. Lau also claimed “she tried to brake and put the car into park but was unsuccessful in slowing the vehicle down.”…
Lau’s SUV was allegedly traveling 44 mph when she first appeared on video and reached a speed of 72 mph when it struck the library wall and adjacent bus shelter, according to investigators who reviewed video surveillance footage of the crash from multiple angles. Lau reportedly told eyewitnesses that she reached for the parking brake and “accidentally moved foot onto the gas pedal.”
Her Mercedes had been regularly serviced and the service records showed no evidence of any problem that would cause her SUV to accelerate on its own. She was charged with four felony counts of manslaughter and pleaded not guilty. Her attorney sought to have those counts reduced to misdemeanors on the grounds that she wasn’t responsible for the speeding car she was driving. A couple weeks ago, the judge refused to lessen the charges.
Judge Bruce Chan denied a motion filed by an attorney for Mary Fong Lau, 80, who is accused of plowing into a couple and their young children while they waited for a bus to the San Francisco Zoo on March 16, 2024…
Seth Morris, the attorney for Lau, argued that the prosecution would have a challenging time convicting Lau of the felony version of gross vehicular manslaughter — a crime known as a “wobbler” in California courts that can either be charged as a felony or a misdemeanor, he said…
But his main argument to the judge was that Lau did not behave with felony gross negligence because she did not intentionally speed. Instead, he said, the car suddenly accelerated.
“Something happened in the street that at this point, is unexplained,” he said. “What’s hard about this case is that sometimes things are unexplained and tragic.”
Again, there’s no evidence that there was anything wrong with the Mercedes. Plus, as mentioned above, Lau initially admitted that she’d accidentally jammed on the accelerator. So the best explanation here, in my opinion, is that she panicked and then later lied to investigators about there being something wrong with her car. Judge Chan made the right call in refusing to lessen the charges.
Unfortunately, this is San Francisco so despite initially doing the right thing, Judge Chan has now indicated that Lau will probably serve zero time in jail for killing four people including two young children. Lau changed her plea to “no contest,” meaning she won’t even admit guilt, and she’s not even going to get community service.
After it was clear Lau was considering changing her plea, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Bruce Chan said that the loss of life was incomprehensible.
Chan said his duty was to balance the deaths with the other factors of the case, including Lau’s age, her lack of criminal history and her remorse, as well as the fact that her own husband had died in a car accident early on in their marriage.
He said that in the hospital after the crash, Lau tearfully told medical staff she wished she could trade places with the family.
“Mrs. Lau is going to spend the rest of her days living with the knowledge of the harm she has caused to others,” he said. Chan indicated his sentence, which will be confirmed at a subsequent hearing, would likely be two to three years of probation, during which time Lau would be prohibited from driving.
I’m not a judge, obviously, but I would think that Lau’s sad story about wanting to change places with the victims is somewhat offset by her alleged efforts to hide her assets from a lawsuit brought by the victim’s family.
In July 2024, the surviving parents of Cardoso de Oliveira and Ramos Pinto filed a wrongful death civil suit against Lau. In May 2025, the relatives filed another civil lawsuit, this time asking a judge to void alleged financial transfers that Lau made after the first civil lawsuit was filed.
Survivors of the slain family accused Lau of transferring her ownership interest in several properties to new limited liability companies and selling properties to third-parties, including her son-in-law, transferring millions of dollars to avoid potential financial penalties from the civil suit.
If she really was sorry she wouldn’t a) lie to investigators about the cause and b) sell her assets to family to shield them from a civil suit. That doesn’t sound to me like someone who is going to spend the rest of her days feeling bad about the harm she has caused. It sounds like someone figuratively getting away with murder.
Lau is now 80 so the argument in her defense is that almost any jail sentence at her age could be a life sentence. She should be facing about 2 years for each count. That could probably be reduced because she has a clear record. Would a 4 year sentence, one year for each person she killed, really be a death sentence? Probably not. Even if it were, the four people she ran over are dead.
Lau deserves significant punishment for her actions. Even if you believe her story of remorse, which I don’t, giving her a pass on wiping out an entire family is just crazy. But in San Francisco these are the kinds of judges you get.
A very sad loss. Creative Director Diego Cardoso de Oliveira Has Died at 40 pic.twitter.com/OYcFRZyVfn
— AgencySpy (@AgencySpy) March 27, 2024
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