A 31-year-old startup founder faces two murder counts after prosecutors say he drove his Tesla at speeds up to 142 mph into stopped traffic on a San Jose highway, killing a young mother and her daughter, then complained about his own scraped knee.
Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Marisa McKeown filed a motion opposing pre-trial release for Zachary Chernicky, arguing that his conduct before and after the December 2, 2025 crash on Highway 87 shows he remains a danger to the public. The prosecution's filing, obtained by KRON4, alleges Chernicky "turned his car into a literal bomb" when he slammed his red Tesla into a Lexus carrying Ivana Balistreri, 29, her one-year-old daughter Lilliana, and Balistreri's fiancé Zack Martins at roughly 10:45 a.m.
Balistreri and Lilliana, who was just days from her second birthday, burned to death inside the wreckage. Martins survived with injuries. Three vehicles were destroyed.
Chernicky, prosecutors say, walked away from the scene. He did not check on the people trapped in the burning car. Instead, he complained about a scrape on his knee.
Data reviewed by investigators showed Chernicky was traveling 142 mph approximately fifteen seconds before the collision and was still moving at 102 mph at the moment of impact, the New York Post reported. The crash occurred in clear weather on a weekday morning, in heavy traffic.
McKeown did not mince words about what the speed meant.
"If people drive like this the natural outcome is that somebody's going to die."
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen framed the charges in equally direct terms. Fox News reported Rosen's statement: "When someone is driving 140 mph, then the driver is the shooter and their car is the bullet."
Prosecutors took care to note that the Tesla itself did not malfunction. McKeown stated plainly that "the Tesla didn't cause this crash. Chernicky did by driving over 140 miles per hour." The murder charges rest entirely on the driver's alleged conduct, not on any vehicle defect.
What prosecutors describe next makes the case even harder to stomach. Court filings allege that after walking away from the wreck that killed a mother and her baby, Chernicky purchased a brand-new Tesla and posted about it on social media. Three months after the crash, he launched a software company for DJs called Chernicky Ventres LLC. His LinkedIn profile listed him as the company's founder.
Before the crash, Chernicky had worked as a technical support engineer in Silicon Valley. He previously held positions at Google and Mistral AI, an artificial intelligence company.
Reckless driving that ends in death is not unique to any one city or state. In a recent Los Angeles case, a woman faced murder charges after an SUV-bus collision killed two people and triggered a chain of deadly events. The pattern is the same: ordinary people pay the price for someone else's disregard for the law.
Chernicky was arrested on July 13 and charged with two counts of murder following a months-long investigation. He was ordered held without bail. He has not entered a plea. A public defender, whose name has not been made public, is representing him and is expected to seek his release on bail ahead of a hearing scheduled for November 17.
The prosecution's motion opposing bail rests on more than the raw numbers. McKeown argued that Chernicky's behavior after the crash, his failure to help, his complaint about a minor injury while two people died in flames feet away, his subsequent purchase and public display of a replacement Tesla, paints a picture of someone indifferent to the consequences of his actions.
"His actions before and after the crash are critical in understanding his ongoing dangerousness to the public."
That framing matters. Murder charges in vehicular cases are rare. Prosecutors typically must show something beyond ordinary recklessness, an implied malice, a conscious disregard for human life so extreme that it amounts to the mental state required for murder. The speed alone is damning. The alleged indifference afterward is what prosecutors appear to be using to clear that bar.
Fatal crashes caused by reckless or unlawful driving continue to claim lives across California. Just months earlier, four young friends from Wrightwood died when their car rolled off Angeles Crest Highway, another reminder that speed and poor judgment on the road carry irreversible consequences.
Ivana Balistreri was born in San Jose to a close-knit Italian family. Her older brother was born in Sicily; her older sisters were born in San Jose. She was 29 years old, engaged to Martins, and raising their daughter Lilliana.
On the morning of December 2, Balistreri's mother Benedetta received a text message telling her that her child had been in a car crash. Her husband Aurelio drove to the scene on Highway 87 but was stopped by police and told to go to the hospital instead. It was Martins, injured, having tried to pull his fiancée and daughter from the burning car, who told Balistreri's parents that Ivana and Lilliana were dead.
The family buried Ivana and Lilliana on January 17 at Santa Teresa Catholic Church. In a statement, the Balistreri family said: "Two bright, innocent, loving souls were taken from us far too soon."
In other parts of the country, reckless driving incidents have drawn national attention for different reasons, but the common thread is always the same: innocent people absorbing the cost of someone else's lawlessness.
Martins, who lost both his fiancée and his daughter in seconds, spoke to ABC 7 at the August hearing.
"I was shocked when we learned about the numbers. You know, 140 miles an hour at 10.45 in the morning? It just makes no sense. It's just such a lack of character and remorse."
He added, simply: "I mean, I lost everything. You know, they were my everything."
Rosie Balistreri, a family member of Ivana's, told ABC 7 that Chernicky's arrest in July reopened wounds that had only just begun to close.
"We are kind of in a softer place, I guess you could say. And then when everything came up again, when he got arrested, it just reopened that wound again."
She urged the public to attend the court proceedings to support the family's push to keep Chernicky in custody.
"I miss my best friend. I miss my niece. But we need everyone to come out to show our support for them, so we can keep this guy in jail, so he's not doing this to anybody else's family."
The next hearing is set for November 17. Chernicky's public defender is expected to argue for bail. Prosecutors want him held. The Balistreri family wants him to stay exactly where he is.
Cases like this one, and the Los Angeles crash that triggered a chain of events killing five, test whether the justice system treats vehicular carnage with the seriousness it deserves, or whether defendants who cause catastrophic harm walk free while families bury their dead.
A man drove 142 mph on a public highway at quarter to eleven on a Tuesday morning, and a 29-year-old woman and her baby daughter burned to death. If that doesn't meet the bar for keeping someone locked up before trial, it's hard to imagine what would.
