Man faces charges in hit-and-run death

A Spirit Lake man is being held in the Bonner County Jail on the charge of vehicular manslaughter following a hit-and-run accident last week in Blanchard, Idaho.

Paul J. Cavanaugh, 43, is being held on a $200,000 bond and awaiting a preliminary hearing scheduled for March 23 in Bonner County. He also is charged with leaving the scene of an accident.

Cavanaugh is accused of driving erratically on Blanchard Cut-off Road about 6:30 p.m. Thursday, hitting an 18-year-old Blanchard woman who died the following day at Kootenai Medical Center.

Sarah Marie Jones, a longtime area resident and graduate of Priest River Lamanna High School, was walking along the side of the road just west of Walker Lane when the accident happened. She was going to meet her boyfriend, Casey Nesbitt, according to a Bonner County sheriff’s report.

Nesbitt told deputies that he watched Jones’ silhouette in the approaching headlights of a pickup behind her. The pickup was weaving all over the road at a high speed, according to Nesbitt’s account in the sheriff’s report. Nesbitt saw the pickup hit Jones and then veer across the wrong lane of traffic and into the trees on the side of the road.

Nesbitt ran to Jones and held her in his arms, as a man later identified as Cavanaugh walked past saying something like “I’ll die with her,” Nesbitt told a deputy. Nesbitt and other witnesses said that Cavanaugh smelled of alcohol.

Neighbors and passers-by also told deputies that they saw Cavanaugh leave the scene of the accident and that he appeared to be drunk.

As Nesbitt sought help for Jones, the driver disappeared. Deputies later tried unsuccessfully to track him down using tracking dogs. The pickup was licensed to Cavanaugh, and witnesses identified Cavanaugh by photos, according to the deputies’ reports.

At 1:35 a.m. the next day, Cavanaugh called the Bonner County Dispatch center and reported that he had been in an accident. Bonner County law enforcement was dispatched to his camp trailer on Al’s Welding Road in Spirit Lake.

Cavanaugh told Bonner County sheriff’s Deputy Mark Strangio and Sgt. James Cotter that his dog had bit him, so he was on the way to the hospital in Newport when he got in an accident.

“He said, ‘I think I may have hit somebody,’ ” Strangio reported. Strangio also noted that Cavanaugh, who has had many previous run-ins with the law, smelled strongly of alcohol, although he denied he had been drinking.

Cavanaugh also said he may have stabbed his dog, and Cotter noted that an injured dog was lying outside the trailer in a woodpile. Cavanaugh was arrested and transported to Bonner General Hospital for treatment of a dog bite and lacerations.