5-year term due for fatalities
NEWPORT, Wash. — A 22-year-old Mead-area woman was sentenced to nearly 5 1/2 years in prison Thursday for a alcohol-related traffic accident last August in Pend Oreille County that killed two of her friends.
There was scarcely a dry eye in the packed courtroom by the time Superior Court Judge Al Nielson sentenced Dawn H. Wiltzius, a recent Mount Spokane High School honor student who had just finished her junior year as a University of Washington biology major.
Some relatives of the victims — Kyle J. Hutchinson, 20, also of Mead, and Walter F. Corman, 21, of Spokane — wept for Wiltzius even though they felt betrayed that she continued to drink and party while awaiting trial.
“We don’t need a third tragedy, dear,” said Corman’s mother, Judy Miller. “You owe a life well lived.”
Friends and relatives described Corman and Hutchinson as well-liked young men with promising futures that were cut short by what Deputy Prosecutor Tony Koures called the worst decision Wiltzius ever made. Koures said Wiltzius decided to drive home from a family party at Gillette Lake in northern Stevens County, even though her father questioned whether she’d had too much to drink.
Wiltzius, who already had an unrelated drunken-driving conviction, acknowledged Thursday that her blood-alcohol level probably was about 0.16 percent – as determined by later tests – when her car ran off state Highway 211 and sank in a swampy pool about 10 1/2 miles north of U.S. Highway 2. She admitted she had been driving 70 to 75 mph on the narrow, winding road.
She pleaded guilty to two counts of vehicular homicide, as charged, and Koures agreed to recommend the minimum standard sentence that Nielson imposed. Nielson rejected defense attorney Richard Bechtolt’s plea for a lower sentence on grounds that Wiltzius accepted responsibility and that Hutchinson and Corman, who also were drunk, arguably contributed to their own deaths.
Koures said “good Samaritans” who came upon the accident shortly after it happened got misleading information about the location of the victims and little help from Wiltzius.
Wellpinit, Wash., resident Ann Ford was one of those passersby. She attended Thursday’s hearing and was so overcome by emotion she had difficulty speaking.
Hutchinson’s sister, Kayla Welch, said she and other family members were willing to “extend grace” to Wiltzius at the time. Welch, who was married the day before her brother died, said she lost sympathy when Wiltzius kept going to drinking parties while free on bail. Also, she said further investigation showed Wiltzius lied about the accident.
Hutchinson’s cousin, Abby Hutchinson, said she had “absolutely adored him since we were little.” She said Wiltzius told her she put Kyle Hutchinson on the trunk of her car and administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but “that never happened. I don’t know why she had to lie to me.”
Wiltzius has been in jail since January, when a Washington State Patrol investigation found she had been at a drinking party in violation of her conditions of release.
Wiltzius tearfully apologized to the victims’ families Thursday.
“I can only imagine the pain of having to bury your own child,” she said, noting that Corman was her boyfriend and that her family and his had become close.
“I wrongly thought I could deal with all this by pushing it to the back of my mind,” she added.