Woman given break on attempted murder counts

A Spokane Valley woman apparently will get a break after trying to run over an ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend at a time when the attacker claimed she was pregnant with the man’s child.

Nineteen-year-old Jessica L. Englehardt, who wasn’t pregnant and managed only to run over the girlfriend’s foot, recently accepted a Superior Court plea bargain that calls for her to be sentenced to 1 2/3 years of confinement next June.

Until then, she is receiving counseling and serving time on electronic home monitoring that will count toward her sentence.

Englehardt had been charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder in a Sept. 15, 2004, incident in which she attempted to run over Austin Daniel Tinsley and his girlfriend, Vandela J. Paxton. Englehardt pleaded guilty earlier this month to a single count of attempted first-degree assault that covers both victims.

Englehardt faces a standard-range sentence of 6 1/3 to 8 1/2 years in prison, but her plea bargain calls for 1 2/3 years. In an unrelated case, Englehardt was sentenced to a month in jail when she pleaded guilty in April to delivery of a controlled substance.

According to court documents, Tinsley told sheriff’s officers he had dated Englehardt about two years and broke up with her three days before she attacked him and Paxton. Tinsley told investigators Englehardt had threatened in a telephone conversation to run over his “skanky” new girlfriend.

Tinsley didn’t answer when Englehardt called again, but investigators said she left him an expletive-laced message with another death threat.

The threats occurred when Tinsley and Paxton took a bus to the Spokane Industrial Park, where Tinsley was to have a job interview. Tinsley said Englehardt saw him and Paxton board the bus and followed it in her car.

A detective said Englehardt told him she and Tinsley had been engaged for a year, and she became angry when she saw Tinsley and Paxton boarding a bus at Broadway and Progress. Englehardt said she called Tinsley and told him, “If you don’t be responsible for me and the baby, I’ll kill you and your new purple-haired girlfriend,” the detective reported.

Deputy Prosecutor Mark Lindsey said authorities later determined Englehardt wasn’t pregnant.

Tinsley told investigators he feared Englehardt would make a scene in front of his prospective employer, so he and Paxton stayed on the bus until it turned onto Sullivan Road.

By then, the bus driver had become concerned about the car that was following the bus erratically. Rather than have the bus driver call 911, Tinsley said he and Paxton got off the bus at a point where they thought they could get away before Englehardt could catch up.

But Englehardt did catch up.

Witnesses said she tried unsuccessfully at first to drive onto the sidewalk where Tinsley and Paxton were walking. Then Englehardt backed across a concrete median and – after a cement mixer swerved out of the way – she accelerated off the median, jumped the curb, crossed the sidewalk and proceeded up a small embankment, where Tinsley and Paxton were scrambling to escape.

After running over Paxton’s left foot, Englehardt backed up for another run at the couple, witnesses said. When that didn’t work, she got out and confronted Tinsley hysterically, insisting he take a paper bag containing some of his belongings, according to court documents.

When Deputy Joe Bonin arrived, he found Englehardt sitting on the sidewalk, crying.