Six Years for Racing: Stockton Man Sentenced in Campus Hit-and-Run Death

When you decide to race someone through city streets at dangerously high speeds, you’re not just risking your own life. You’re gambling with everyone around you—and on October 2024, that gamble cost Jazmine Floris her life.

Jamaraqui Burks learned that lesson the hard way this week when he was sentenced to six years in prison. The San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office says Burks pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence after his reckless driving on Stockton streets ended with a crash onto the Delta College campus that killed the 23-year-old Floris. Investigators found that Burks was behind the wheel of a Tesla Model X, speeding, weaving through traffic, and apparently engaged in a street race when he lost control. The vehicle struck Floris, who died from her injuries. Burks fled the scene but was quickly apprehended by Delta College police officers.

This wasn’t a split-second mistake. This was a pattern of choices—speeding, weaving, racing—that compound into tragedy. Each decision in that sequence was made by someone who either didn’t consider the consequences or didn’t care. And while six years won’t bring Jazmine Floris back, San Joaquin County District Attorney Ron Freitas made clear in his statement that accountability matters.“Those who choose to endanger our community through this kind of reckless behavior will be held fully accountable,”he said, emphasizing that the sentence honors Floris’s memory by standing with victims and working to prevent what he called“entirely avoidable tragedies.”

The reality is that street racing and aggressive driving aren’t victimless thrills. They’re split-second decisions that destroy families. Jazmine Floris was 23 years old, likely a student at Delta College, with her whole life ahead of her. She had nothing to do with Burks’s ego or whatever compelled him to race through Stockton that day. But she paid the ultimate price.

This case is a sharp reminder that when you get behind the wheel, everyone in your path is counting on you to make the right choice—not the fastest one, not the most exciting one, but the responsible one.