By Emilie Eaton

Ricky Cantu could not help himself.

He’d been convicted of drunken driving six times. Judges had suspended his license. They’d sent him to prison. They’d ordered him to get treatment. None of it worked.

It was only a matter of time before Cantu drank and drove again, before a police officer saw him swerving across lanes and pulled him over. Reports written by different officers over many years list the same unmistakable signs: Slurred speech. Bloodshot eyes. A strong smell of alcohol.

During one field sobriety test, Cantu nearly fell over, prompting the officer to cut the exercise short “for his safety.”

Cantu is a Gulf War veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and who was beaten as a child, according to his lawyers. He drank heavily to “self-medicate,” they say.

Rudy Borrego, 51, a father of three, did not know any of this history when he took his motorcycle out for a ride on the evening of Feb. 24, 2018.

“I kissed him on the cheek, and I told him to hurry up and come back,” his wife Grace recalled. “And he kissed me back.”

Read more at ExpressNews.com.