Judge urges grieving families to get along

WENATCHEE – A Chelan County Superior Court judge stepped down from the bench to address two families grieving the loss of a child in a car crash, urging them to stop blaming each other and focus on the surviving child.

Judge John Bridges took the unusual step during sentencing of Denise Orr, of Omak, who pleaded guilty March 7 to vehicular homicide in the death of her 4-year-old son, Cheyenne Orr-Rhodes.

Investigators found four medications in Orr’s blood after she crashed her car near Lake Chelan on April 10, 2004. The boy died. Orr’s daughter, 6, survived.

At the sentencing Tuesday, Bridges ordered Orr and her ex-husband, John Rhodes, to face each other, then stepped down from the bench and said he had never seen a case where “the families became so selfish.”

Bridges then sentenced Orr, 30, to 20 months in prison for causing the boy’s death.