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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Driver gets community service


Napier
 (The Spokesman-Review)

A Spokane Valley teenager who abandoned a critically injured friend in a vehicle accident last July escaped detention Wednesday, but not a piece of Juvenile Court Judge Ellen Kalama Clark’s mind.

“You thought of yourself first in that situation, and I think you should be ashamed of yourself,” Clark told 16-year-old Jessica Napier.

“How dare you leave another person, a friend of yours, in a situation like that?”

Earlier this month, Clark convicted Napier of vehicular assault and failure to remain at the scene of an accident.

When two of Napier’s friends, including 14-year-old Amaryssa Byers, insisted on riding on the back of her 1993 Geo Storm hatchback, Napier consented under protest. Byers fell off at the corner of 21st Avenue and Union Road.

Napier passed her cell phone to three passengers, all teenage girls, who called 911 and remained at the scene while Napier drove home with a fourth girl.

The girls who remained at the scene told sheriff’s deputies a lie to protect Napier, but they quickly came clean when other witnesses reported seeing two girls riding on the back of a car.

Clark said she could forgive the “stupid decision” to allow two friends to ride on the back of her car, facing backward, pressed against the car’s back window.

Probably every adult in the courtroom had done something stupid or dangerous as a teenager, she said.

Leaving the scene of the accident was another matter, Clark added.

“That’s not just a legal issue,” the judge said.

“That tells me who you are as a person and as a friend to Amaryssa.”

Clark reminded Napier of testimony about Byers’ condition when Napier drove away.

“The testimony is that she fell off the car and her head bounced a few times,” Clark recalled.

“She is unconscious. She is twitching, and she has very serious injuries, and your first priority is, ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to get in trouble.’ “

Byers suffered a skull fracture and bleeding inside her skull and wasn’t expected to live.

Doctors considered her recovery after two weeks in critical condition to be remarkable.

Byers testified at Napier’s trial that she couldn’t remember the accident.

She sat silently Wednesday with her parents, John and Becky Byers.

Both her parents told Clark that they didn’t want detention for Napier. Nor did they want a no-contact order.

John Byers acknowledged in court that he and his wife have retained an attorney and that a lawsuit against Napier and her family is possible.

But he chatted with Napier’s mother, Carol Napier, and gave her a hug when the court adjourned.

“It was bad decisions on both ends,” Byers said in court. ” … Amaryssa has a lot of healing to do and getting back on her feet and just being a normal kid, and so does Jessica. I think we just need to end it now and let them get on with their lives.”

Becky Byers agreed: “Let’s just move on, move on and make something positive out of this and teach those kids.”

Carol Napier apologized, and said she would leave the question of punishment “up to the courts and God himself.”

Clark accepted Spilker’s and Reid’s recommendation that Napier get no detention but nine months of probation and 80 hours of community service.

Deputy Prosecutor William Reeves called for Napier to get “at least a few days” of detention.

In a brief statement to Clark, Jessica Napier said she was glad Byers recovered from her injuries.

“I understand the big mistake,” Napier said. ” … As long as it never happens again, that’s all I have to say.”