Ann Marie Echevarria said she was crushed after a Bishop Gorman basketball standout killed her husband in a 2020 crash and ended up serving 56 days in jail for it.

A plea deal meant Zaon Collins was not tried criminally for the crash, in which he pleaded guilty to a count of reckless driving resulting in death and a count of vehicular manslaughter.

Collins was sentenced in 2023 to three months in jail and three years of probation but was released 56 days after turning himself in to begin the sentence.

“Fifty-six days is not justice,” Echevarria said on Thursday.

Echeverria and her son, Eric Echevarria Jr., sued Collins in 2021, alleging wrongful death and negligence in the death of her husband, 52-year-old Eric Echevarria.

The civil trial is inching toward an end, possibly as soon as next week, and on Thursday, the widow and her son told jurors about the man they lost.

The Clark County district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.

Ann Marie Echevarria, who was divorced and had four children, met her future husband, a Clark County School District custodian, when he worked at the school her son attended.

Sparks flew and a “whirlwind” romance began, she said. “It was like God sent this man down to me.”

The couple married in 2006, and Eric Echevarria proved to be a good provider and great father to her children, she said. She believed they would be together for the rest of their lives.

When they had a child together, Eric Echevarria Jr., her husband was thrilled, she said, adding, “He spoiled Eric.”

The day of the crash, she said she was at Albertsons when she sensed something was wrong.

“I felt like something left my body,” she said. She called her son, who said his father had gone to get food but had not yet returned.

When she went to the hospital, she said staff told her, “He’s gone.”

“I was like, ‘Where did he go?,’” she said. “I couldn’t wrap my head around it.”

In the aftermath, she said, “I was in shock, and I just wanted to crawl in my bed and not wake up.”

Eric Echevarria Jr., now an 18-year-old senior at Sierra Vista High School, said he doesn’t talk much about losing his father but thinks about him every day.

He remembered his father as a hands-on dad, who would join him on the slides at waterparks and play games with him at arcades.

“He treated everyone with kindness,” the son said, adding that his father was someone who always kept his word and encouraged him to do well in school.

When his father died, he lost the person who guided him, he said.

He said he didn’t recall much about the day of the crash, except his mother screaming and people crying at the hospital.

At least one juror appeared to be crying as he testified.

His mother said her son won’t drive and is afraid of the freeway. He’s changed, she said, and become “very closed off.”

Collins, a star UNLV recruit who played basketball last season at Fresno State was initially accused of being under the influence of marijuana when the crash occurred. Authorities said he had been speeding in a 35 mph zone at the time.

Criminal defense attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld argued that the crash, which occurred as Eric Echevarria was attempting to make a left turn, was Echevarria’s fault and that Nevada’s marijuana DUI law was “arbitrary and unscientific.”

“They dragged his name through the dirt,” Ann Marie Echevarria told the jury on Thursday.

In response to the woman’s testimony, the Chesnoff & Schonfeld law firm released a statement Thursday night: “Based upon documents and videos produced by the State of Nevada in discovery in the criminal case, we made legal arguments regarding the proximate cause of the collision.”

A grand jury declined to indict Collins on a DUI charge.

Prosecutors had said his system had 3.0 nanograms per milliliter of THC, the compound that gives marijuana its high, when the legal limit was 2.0 nanograms per milliliter. But a Metropolitan Police Department forensic scientist told grand jurors there was not enough research to know when Collins consumed marijuana.

Contact Noble Brigham at [email protected]. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.