Jury Sentences Cena for Road Rage Death in Fairfax City

A Fairfax County jury on Wednesday sentenced Librado Cena to three months in jail for a road rage incident at the Fair City Mall that led to another driver’s death.

Cena, 58, of Fairfax City, had been found guilty Tuesday of misdemeanor assault for a scuffle that led to the death of 63-year-old William O’Brien last April.

he maximum sentence is 12 months in jail.

Cena testified that he had hit O'Brien only once in the Best Buy parking lot in Fairfax. But O’Brien died 10 days later, reportedly from a head injury during the fight that was made worse by a blood-thinner he had been prescribed.

Charges of aggravated malicious wounding were dropped last fall, but a grand jury indicted Cena on a misdemeanor assault and battery charge in November.

Before the sentence was announced, O’Brien’s family members gave tearful testimony about the impact his death had on the family, according to The Washington Post. 

Robin Remsburg, O’Brien’s widow, described the suffering O’Brien endured in the 10 days he clung to life after the assault, the Post reported, and she said that the “legal system has failed my husband and family,” since Cena was only facing a misdemeanor charge. She said he should have been “on trial for homicide.”

A final sentencing hearing in the case will occur on May 9. At that time, a judge can decrease the jury’s recommended sentence, but not increase it.