A Texas man charged with manslaughter after hitting the mother of his 1-year-old child with his car will retain his parental rights, a judge has ruled.

Ulise DeLao, 29, was arrested on May 28 and charged with intoxication manslaughter in Canyon, Texas, after police were dispatched to a car accident involving a pedestrian. DeLao struck 27-year-old Brittany Torres as she sat outside the vehicle and was pronounced dead at the scene, Canyon Police said then.

A online fundraising because Torres’ family said she and DeLao were in a relationship.

Randall County court records show he is charged with manslaughter. In August, a grand jury declined to indict DeLao on an enhanced charge of murder. He pleaded not guilty shortly after his arrest, his attorney Jesse Quackenbush said.

On Monday, a Randall County judge ruled in a separate case that he can retain parental rights to his 1-year-old child with Torres.

The day after Torres’ death, her mother, Jaqueline Sanchez, filed a petition in Randall County civil court to become the legal guardian of DeLao and Torres’ 1-year-old son, Law and crime and local station ABC KVII-TV reported. NBC News has reviewed the docket summary for that case.

However, on Monday, Judge James W. Anderson denied the request to terminate DeLao’s parental rights, media reported.

“The judge refused to terminate his parental rights,” Quackenbush told NBC News. “There is no intention on the part of the court system to take away your parental rights, now or in the future. The judge made a final non-appealable decision based on his discretion that there was no evidence to terminate parental rights.”

Quackenbush said the judge made the “absolutely correct decision.”

He said there was no foul play in May’s death. “After our grand jury went through it with a fine-tooth comb in Randall County, Texas, they determined that there was no evidence of intentional conduct, that this was, at best, a case of manslaughter, accidental death ,” he said of the grand jury’s refusal to indict DeLao on one count of murder in the case.

Sanchez’s attorney did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment Thursday.

Quackenbush said his client admitted he ran over his girlfriend, but that it was accidental.

“She got out of the car extremely drunk at her house where my client drove her and he was pulling away in a very normal way and she was in the back of the car and he didn’t know it and she was hit and accidentally killed,” he said.

DeLao was released in October on $250,000 bond, records show. As part of his bond, he cannot consume alcohol, drugs, leave Potter, Randall or Armstrong counties, must surrender his passports, have a device installed in his vehicle that uses a “deep lung breathing analysis mechanism” and must wear a GPS tracking device.

Quackenbush said DeLao, whom he described as an honorably discharged veteran who served six years in the Marine Corps with no criminal record, plans to fight the manslaughter charge.