Manslaughter charges expected in fatal Athol collision

A Hayden man will face three counts of vehicular manslaughter for causing a head-on collision Saturday that killed a Spokane man and his two young daughters.

Investigators believe Ryan J. Turner, 27, had been drinking before he got on U.S. Highway 95 driving the wrong way in the southbound lanes, Idaho State police Sgt. Ron Sutton said Monday.

“We do know he had been consuming,” Sutton said. “The odor was there of an alcoholic beverage.”

Results of a blood-alcohol test are expected in a couple of weeks.

The crash happened just before 4 a.m. about a mile south of Athol. The northbound and southbound lanes there are divided by a wide median.

“It’s still unknown exactly where he entered the highway at to get going in the wrong direction,” Sutton said.

“The fact he was driving the wrong way on a controlled-access, divided highway, that’s in itself a very high level of negligence,” he said. “And then combine the fact that we believe he may have been driving under the influence, those things determine to what level he will be charged.”

Turner remains hospitalized at Kootenai Health, the ISP said. His condition is not being released by the hospital.

Mathew-Michael T. Baroni, 33, and his daughters, Madilyn Baroni, 8, and Molly Baroni, 6, died at the scene.

Baroni worked for years as an independent contractor for The Spokesman-Review, picking up a load of newspapers in Spokane every morning and taking them to Sandpoint for other carriers to deliver to subscribers’ homes. Baroni’s wife had to work and, not wanting to leave his two daughters home alone, Baroni loaded a mattress in the minivan for the girls to rest on during the drive to Sandpoint and back, according to Pat Leader, Spokesman-Review director of circulation and audience development.

Sutton said the back seats had been removed from the van and none of the three was wearing a seat belt.

“There was no way for them to even be restrained,” Sutton said of the two children. “It’s quite possible they would have survived had they been belted in.”

Their mother, Meghan Baroni, works as a nurse for Spokane Public Schools.