An Ector County drunk driver who killed a young Odessa father is now facing more than prison time. Prosecutors are moving to make him pay child support to the son he left fatherless, marking one of the first real-world tests of Texas’s Bentley’s Law in the Permian Basin.
The case centers on Jose Contreras, who was 18 at the time of the crash that killed 25-year-old Alex Bingham. In the early morning hours of October 27, 2024, Contreras was driving a Dodge Challenger through Odessa when he struck Bingham, then fled the scene and abandoned the car down the street. Bingham was found badly injured and later died at the hospital. Contreras eventually pleaded guilty to intoxication manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison this past spring, according to News West 9.
Now the Ector County District Attorney’s Office wants to go a step further, using Bentley’s Law, the 2023 Texas statute that requires convicted drunk drivers to pay child support to the surviving children of the people they kill. It is named for a Missouri boy who lost both parents and a baby brother to a drunk driver, and Texas was one of the earlier states to put it on the books.
Bingham’s family has already made clear that the criminal sentence did not feel like enough. His mother-in-law told local news that Contreras will be parole-eligible in five years, while the family is left to raise a child without a father for the rest of their lives. Whatever a judge decides regarding the support order will not undo that.
What Bentley’s Law Actually Requires
Under Texas House Bill 393, someone convicted of intoxication manslaughter can be ordered to pay child support to the victim’s surviving kids until they turn 18. Payments are supposed to start within a year of the offender’s release from prison, and the amount is determined based on financial standing, similar to how a normal child support case works.
It is not a replacement for prison time. It is meant to be an additional consequence, one that follows the offender out of the prison gate instead of stopping at sentencing.
Why This Case Matters for the Basin
If this becomes one of the first Bentley’s Law orders in Ector County, it will be a preview of how the law plays out in real courtrooms rather than in press releases. Ten years sounds like a long sentence until you consider that Contreras could be on parole in half that time, while Bingham’s child grows up without him for all eighteen years and beyond.
A support order will not bring anybody back, but it does mean the man responsible cannot just serve his time and move on with a clean slate. He gets to keep paying, literally, long after he is a free man. There is something fitting about that math, even if it will never balance the scales.