UPDATE: Driver Charged in Fatal Red Light Crash

After four months of sitting by the phone biting her nails, Stephanie Davenport got a small taste of justice Wednesday in the January death of her 23-year-old daughter.

The Orange County Sheriff's Department called to say deputies had just arrested Jose Javier Fernandez Ramirez, 20, of San Clemente, the driver whose red Toyota pickup smashed into Nicole Davenport's black Hyundai on the morning of Jan. 14 in Lake Forest.

Ramirez faces a possible six-year prison sentence on charges of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence for allegedly running a "solid red light," according to a press release from the district attorney's office.

"I'm just happy he got arrested," Stephanie Davenport said Wednesday afternoon. "I've been sitting here for four months, biting my nails and making calls."

At first, in the wreck, which took place just after 11 a.m. at the intersection of Bake Parkway and North Pointe Drive in Lake Forest.

Davenport, an Anaheim resident who worked as a legal courier, was pronounced dead after being rushed to Mission Hospital. Ramirez escaped injury.

At a makeshift memorial Davenport's family and friends set up at the intersection in January, her parents taped a plaintive note to a light pole, asking for information to help solve the case. An eyewitness saw the message and contacted family members to assure them Davenport, who was turning left onto Pointe when Ramirez slammed into the passenger side of her car, did nothing wrong, her mother recalled.

Nevertheless, it took the sheriff's Major Accident Reconstruction Team nearly four months of interviewing witnesses and examining tire marks and other evidence to nail down the case, sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said Wednesday.

"Sometimes witnesses give conflicting statements [or] perceive things differently," Amormino said of the painstaking investigation process.

Stephanie Davenport praised the department for keeping her updated regularly. But she said news of the arrest still came as a surprise.

On Wednesday, authorities collared Ramirez at his job at an Herbalife manufacturing plant in Lake Forest. He was jailed on $100,000 bail and is expected to be arraigned Thursday, according to the D.A.'s office. In addition to the vehicular manslaughter charge, he faces a misdemeanor count of driving without insurance. (Update: On Friday, Ramirez pleaded not guilty to both charges. His next hearing is scheduled for May 16.)

Prosecutors said the traffic signal "had been red for several seconds" when Ramirez sailed through. He wasn't drunk or distracted by a cell phone; he just thought he could beat the light, Amormino said.