Frederick Russell, driver who killed three students, released from prison

Frederick Russell, who was convicted of killing three Washington State University students and seriously injuring three others in 2001 in a drunken driving crash, was released from prison Tuesday.

Russell, now 36, was the subject of a yearslong manhunt after he fled three days before a scheduled court hearing. He was located in Dublin, Ireland, in 2005, where he was living under an alias and working as a security guard. He remained in an Irish jail for a year fighting extradition back to the United States.

Greg Sorensen’s son, Ryan Sorensen, was one of the three killed in the crash.

“I think he’s being released way too early,” Sorensen said Tuesday. “He’s still alive and our children are all gone.”

Russell was sentenced to 14 years in prison for vehicular homicide and vehicular assault in January 2008. He was given credit for a little more than a year he served in the Whitman County Jail awaiting trial and, after a Court of Appeals decision, also was given credit for the year he served in Ireland.

Russell had been drinking heavily the night of June 4, 2001, when he lost control on state Route 270 between Moscow and Pullman. His vehicle collided with a car, lost control and hit a second car carrying seven WSU students returning from a movie.

At the time of his sentencing, Rich Morrow, father of victim Stacey Morrow, complained that Russell would likely only serve 10 years of his sentence with time off for good behavior in prison.

“To me, 10 years may not be fair, but I don’t know what’s fair,” Morrow told a Spokesman-Review reporter at the time.

Sorensen couldn’t bring himself to attend Russell’s sentencing in 2008.

“I don’t think they would have wanted to hear my feelings,” he said.

His wife died of cancer a year after their son was killed.

“Her life just deteriorated to nothing after Ryan’s death,” Sorensen said. “She’d given up.”

Now Sorensen finds himself doing the best he can to carry on after the news that Russell was released.

“There’s not much I can do about it,” he said. “I just think he got off awful easy.”

Russell was released from Larch Corrections Center in Yacolt, Washington, and will spend the next 18 months under supervision.

Killed in the crash were WSU students Morrow, Sorensen and Brandon Clements. Students Sameer Ranade, John “Matt” Wagner and Kara Eichelsdoerfer received serious injuries.

Bernadette Olson, who was a graduate student at the time of the crash and a Russell family friend, received a six-month jail term in 2004 for lying to federal prosecutors after she drove Russell to Canada to escape the vehicular homicide charges.

At the time of the crash, Russell’s father, Gregory D. Russell, was director of the criminal justice program at Washington State University. He denied having any role in his son’s escape.