Plea bargain in fatal crash angers family

When 12-year-old Riven Fenton heard another kid use the word “horrible” in casual conversation, he started crying.

“That’s not horrible,” his father, John Fenton, recalled him saying. “You don’t know what horrible is.”

Riven survived a July 23 crash on I-90 that killed his mother, aunt and a baby cousin. On Tuesday, the driver who caused the accident pleaded guilty to a single count of vehicular manslaughter, and another count was dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

John Fenton is angry that prosecutors are charging Kevin T. Culp, 22, with only one count of vehicular manslaughter. The charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.

“I think it’s a travesty he could be out in 10 years,” Fenton said. “Mr. Culp gets 10 years and Riven goes from the age of 11 on with no mom.”

Though each count of vehicular manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 10 years, Chief Deputy Prosecutor Lansing Haynes said it’s rare for judges to run sentences consecutively.

So even though the maximum penalty for a conviction on two counts would have been 20 years, Haynes said it was unlikely that Culp would have served a full 20 years.

“That’s why it seemed like a reasonable agreement to put all of the victims into one count,” Haynes said Tuesday.

According to previous testimony in the case, Culp was on his way to buy medication to control seizures when he drove through the median, hit a semitruck and crashed head-on into a minivan. The driver of the van, 40-year-old Henrietta Lewis of Spokane Valley, was killed, along with 30-year-old Tonia M. Lewis. Tonia Lewis’ 9-month-old son, Ebin Lewis, died a month later of injuries suffered in the accident.

Three others, including Riven Fenton, were also injured.

Prosecutors alleged that the accident occurred when Culp had a seizure and that he was negligent because he hadn’t been taking his medicine. Sentencing in the case has been set for Jan. 11.

Once the Idaho case wraps up, Spokane County prosecutors plan to retry Culp on a 2004 charge of first-degree manslaughter. He allegedly shot a man to death in 2004 while fiddling with a loaded gun in a Spokane Valley cemetery. A jury deadlocked earlier this year in that case.

John Fenton said he tells Riven very little about the vehicular manslaughter case, but he once asked the boy what kind of punishment he felt Culp deserved.

“He said he’d like Mr. Culp ‘to look like my mom did after the wreck,’ ” Fenton said.

But Riven told his father that he wouldn’t want that to happen if Culp had children.

He said that he wouldn’t want any other children to have to live with that memory.