Friend’s fall hard lesson for teen

Lots of people told stories about teenage blunders Tuesday during the trial of a 16-year-old Spokane Valley girl who let a friend fall off the back of her moving car and then drove away.

But the defendant, Jessica Napier, had nothing to say about the accident that nearly killed 14-year-old Amaryssa Byers.

Napier didn’t take the stand in her nonjury trial in Spokane County Juvenile Court on charges of vehicular assault and failure to remain at the scene of an accident.

She quickly left the courtroom when Judge Ellen Kalama Clark convicted her on both counts, and faces up to 60 days of detention and up to 300 hours of community service when she is sentenced on March 15.

Napier had an intermediate driver’s license last year, and wasn’t supposed to have any unrelated teenagers in her car – much less on it. But she gave five of her friends a ride the afternoon of July 1, and allowed two of them to sit on the back of her 1993 Geo Storm hatchback.

Testimony indicated Napier and Kailey Roberts repeatedly directed Byers and Sasha Davidson, 15, to get off the back of the car, but Davidson and Byers paid no attention. Finally, Napier gave an annoyed sigh and started driving, passenger Karena Hansen testified.

Davidson said she and Byers were determined to ignore Napier “unless she just wouldn’t go.”

Clark repeated that phrase – “unless she just wouldn’t go” – when she convicted Napier. The driver had control of the car, Clark said.

Byers and Davidson rode with their backs pressed against the car’s back window and their legs hanging over the vehicle’s rear spoiler. When they had gone about 600 feet downhill on 21st Avenue, Napier turned onto Union Road and Byers fell off.

“She landed on her feet and fell backward and hit her head multiple times because it kind of bounced, and then she rolled over,” Davidson testified.

She and others in the group said Napier quickly stopped the car and they ran back to Byers. Byers, apparently unconscious, was “making noises and like twitching,” Davidson testified.

Byers was so severely injured, with a skull fracture and bleeding inside her skull, that she wasn’t expected to live. Doctors considered her recovery after two weeks in critical condition to be remarkable.

Byers walked into the courtroom Tuesday and testified that she couldn’t remember the accident, but remembered being with her friends the day before, at a sleepover.

Byers said Napier has apologized to her, and she believes what happened to her was just an accident.

When it happened, Jayci Roberts testified, Napier said, “I’m going to be in so much trouble. I’m not supposed to have people riding in my car.”

So, Jayci Roberts added, “We all together decided we would cover for her (Napier), and then she left.”

Napier provided her cell phone for one of the girls to call 911. Then, Hansen said, she and Napier drove to Napier’s home while Davidson and sisters Jayci and Kailey Roberts remained at the scene.

Hansen said when Napier got home she called her mother, who came quickly. Hansen said Napier’s mother, Carol Napier, asked her to write a statement about what happened.

Carol Napier testified that she and her daughter were just leaving to go back to the accident scene when a sheriff’s officer called and told them to do so.

Spokane County sheriff’s officers testified that Davidson and the Roberts sisters told them Byers had been walking and they thought a car had struck her.

Deputy Prosecutor William Reeves asked whether Napier asked her friends to lie. “I don’t think she told us to … not that I know of,” Davidson said.

The lie was discovered when deputies contacted a group of roofers who were working nearby. Roofer Bryan Rider testified that he saw two girls riding on the back of a car with their hair whipping in their faces.

When he was younger, the 23-year-old Rider testified, “I myself have done the same, but I wouldn’t have been going that fast.”

Assistant Public Defender Derek Reid recalled a similar indiscretion in his own life. When he was 19, Reid said, he was the designated driver for a rugby team that insisted on having about 20 members ride in the bed of his Ford Ranger pickup.

“We all make mistakes when we are teenagers,” Reid said.

“A mistake is not turning off your turn signal,” Clark said later.

Then she offered her own anecdote, noting her 16-year-old son recently had a collision with another 16-year-old driver.

“They were both scared to death,” Clark said. “They both jumped on the phone and called their parents immediately. What they did not do was leave that scene.”