CHICAGO — Speeding up Cicero Avenue near Midway Airport at more than twice the posted speed limit, Daniel Regalado swerved into oncoming traffic and crashed into a family’s SUV in January 2021. The collision killed Cire Robinson, a 12-year-old Chicago girl riding in the Cadillac Escalade he struck.
Regalado was on bail for three felony cases at the time, including two separate gun matters. Today, those are all still pending. But Regalado has pleaded guilty to killing Cire Robinson.
Judge Angela Munari-Petrone sentenced him to 10 years on one count of reckless homicide with a motor vehicle, court records show. She also recommended that he receive grief counseling, drug and alcohol treatment, and mental health services in prison.
Regalado, 30, expressed regret for the crash during his initial bail hearing in February 2021.
“I just wanna say I’m sorry to the mom and to the dad,” Regalado said, his voice breaking with emotion.
“I wanna apologize to Cire because she was a little 12-year-old, and I have a daughter, and I can just imagine how that lady feels right now,” he stated after being advised of the legal risk he would take by speaking about the case. “And I know she mad and I’m very sorry. But I didn’t do that. That wasn’t me, and I just wanna apologize.”
He spoke about the case during an earlier probable cause hearing, too.
“I was running away. I was running away because I was being shot at,” he told the judge on a video stream that showed him lying in a hospital bed with his head and neck braced. “This has been ongoing… This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair at all.”
But witness accounts and a Lyft driver’s dashcam video offered no evidence that anyone was chasing or shooting at Regalado before the collision.
Prosecutors said he was driving northbound on the 4900 block of South Cicero with two passengers when he crossed the median and plowed into the Escalade at 9:35 p.m. on January 20, 2021. Five seconds before impact, his car was allegedly traveling 66 mph in a 30 mph zone.
The impact sent Regalado’s girlfriend flying out of his Chevy Impala. She suffered a broken femur, facial fractures, and other injuries.
Regalado, his back seat passenger, and Cire Robinson’s father were also hospitalized.
Prosecutors initially claimed that Regalado was intoxicated at the time of the crash, but they soon retracted those allegations and dropped DUI charges.
His parole date is set for January 9, 2026.
But that may change because he is still fighting all three of the felony cases that he was on bail for at the time of the crash.
In one case, Regalado is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm and reckless discharge of a firearm stemming from a July 2018 incident that prompted a SWAT stand-off in Oak Park.
In January 2019, prosecutors charged him with felony manufacture-delivery of cannabis. A judge released him on his own recognizance in that case and for an additional $250 in the pending Oak Park gun case.
Seven months later, with both of those cases still pending, Regalado was again arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of another gun, court records show.
Judge Ramon Ocasio, who is overseeing his cases, allowed him to get out of jail by posting just $500 more.
In December 2015, prosecutors charged Regalado with five counts of attempted murder, unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, and possessing a defaced firearm following an incident in the 700 block of North Orleans in River North. A grand jury later returned a total of 17 felony counts against him, including five counts of attempted murder.
Cook County prosecutors dropped that case in March 2017.
