Teachers’ Deaths Mourned

Wed., Nov. 12, 1997

From Staff And Wire Reports

Students and staff at Auburn and Sumner public schools are mourning the deaths of Bill and Mary Martinson, husband-and-wife teachers who Grant County authorities say were killed by a drunken driver.

The Martinsons died Friday in a head-on collision on Washington 26, a couple of miles west of the Grant County town of Royal City. Their car was struck by a westbound Ford Explorer, which crossed the highway into the eastbound lane and struck another car before hitting the Martinsons, a State Patrol report said.

The driver of the Explorer, Eustaquio C. Angel, 32, of Royal City, was charged Monday with two counts of vehicular homicide in Grant County Superior Court in Ephrata. He was being held on $100,000 bail. Charging papers allege he was intoxicated.

The Martinsons were en route to Washington State University in Pullman to visit their daughter, when the accident happened.

Bill Martinson, 51, was a physical education teacher and all-sport athletic coach at Cascade Middle School in Auburn for 28 years. Mary Martinson, 50, taught first grade at Victor Falls Elementary School near Bonney Lake for 13 years.

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