Auditor testifies in Russell trial

COLFAX – Attorneys for Fred Russell questioned state toxicology laboratory workers and the Washington State Patrol auditor Friday in their efforts to get the vehicular homicide case against him dismissed.

Russell faces three counts each of vehicular homicide and vehicular assault for allegedly causing a wreck on the Moscow-Pullman Highway in 2001 that left three dead and three badly injured.

A blood test taken after the crash showed he was drunk at the time. Lab officials subsequently destroyed the blood samples inadvertently while Russell was a fugitive, and his defense team says the case should be thrown out because they can’t independently test the blood.

Washington State Patrol auditor Sgt. Patricia Lankford testified that she had identified recurring problems with record-keeping, security and sample storage at the toxicology lab in Seattle, and that former lab manager Ann Marie Gordon was reluctant to cooperate with auditors and to respond to audit findings.

When Russell’s blood vials went missing in July 2004 and she was asked to investigate, Lankford said, the lab’s records were so lacking that she could find no concrete information about the handling of the vials.

“I have no way of knowing who, when, what, where or why,” she said.

Friday was the second day of pre-trial hearings, in advance of the Oct. 8 trial in Whitman County Superior Court. The hearings resume Monday.