‘She didn’t get what she deserved the first time’: Victims’ families speak out after driver arraigned in two pedestrian deaths

If Megan C. Skillingstad had received a harsher sentence in 2011 when she hit a retired steelworker with her car and fled the scene, maybe she wouldn’t have made the same mistake again last month, leaving two people dead. At least, that’s what family members of the people she killed think.

“She didn’t get what she deserved the first time,” said Dwayne Widener, the brother of Dennis Widener, who was killed by Skillingstad in 2011. “I truly believe it might have made a difference if it hurt more. I don’t think it did.”

Skillingstad served less than a year in jail for Widener’s death.

Now 29, Skillingstad was arrested April 30 after she hit two pedestrians in the West Plains late April 29 in her GMC, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Desmond Miller, 25, and his fiancée, Kady McFeron, 33, died shortly after they were hit by Skillingstad’s car. The Spokane County Medical Examiner ruled their deaths as accidental.

Skillingstad entered a not guilty plea Tuesday at her arraignment before Spokane Superior Court Judge Timothy Fennessy.

“It’s sickening,” Tonda Miller, mother of Desmond, said of Skillingstad’s appearance on Tuesday morning. “It’s hard to hear somebody say ‘not guilty.’ It just rips my heart out to know she’s done it before.”

Like the Widener family, Tonda Miller also thinks her son and his fiancée’s deaths could have been avoided if Skillingstad had served a more meaningful sentence before.

Miller described her son as a “people person, good-hearted and a loving dad,” devoted to his young son.

“He protected me,” she said.

The two lived with Tonda Miller .

“She was like my daughter,” she said of McFeron.

The two were making their way back home on foot from Northern Quest Resort & Casino on the night of April 29 when they were killed, she said.

Spokane County sheriff’s deputies found the couple after a caller reported a woman lying in a field just south of the shoulder of West Trails Road, a few miles from Northern Quest Resort & Casino, at about 11:45 p.m., according to court documents.

Deputies also located tire marks, vehicle debris, a destroyed fence and a license plate that belonged to Skillingstad in the roadway. Deputies found Skillingstad less than a mile from the crash inside of her vehicle, which appeared to have blood on its front end, court documents said.

Skillingstad told deputies she fell asleep behind the wheel and thought she hit a power pole, court documents said. Deputies reported smelling alcohol on her. She told deputies she drank two beers.

She was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide and two counts of fatal hit-and-run.

Early on the morning of June 23, 2011, Skillingstad struck 66-year-old Dennis Widener, who was exercising on his bike in north Spokane.

Widener, who was a retired Steelworker at Kaiser Aluminum, died about two weeks later after a heart attack. His death was caused by injuries sustained during the crash, according to court documents.

“If you knew Dennis, you liked him,” said Dwayne Widener.

Dennis Widener was a friendly, outgoing man who was a big fan of Johnny Cash and loved playing guitar, his younger brother said. After the older brother joined the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, Dwayne Widener followed in his footsteps.

After Skillingstad hit him, she fled the scene of the crash and did not turn herself in for months, despite her friends’ insistence that she do so, according to court records.

“It was so aggravating for her not to come forward,” said Retha Widener Kincaid, Dennis Widener’s sister. “We were all so heartbroken wondering who did this.”

Spokane police eventually contacted Skillingstad on Aug. 5, 2011, after a friend’s mother tipped them off.

“It’s a devastating thing to go through to have them snatched away so suddenly like that,” said Kincaid, who was at Skillingstad’s arraignment in support of Miller’s and McFeron’s families.

Skillingstad, who had no prior criminal history at the time, pleaded guilty in 2013 to one count of failing to remain at the scene of a fatal accident.

Judge Harold Clarke sentenced her to one year in the Spokane County Jail and 240 hours of community custody.

The standard range for such an offender is 31-41 months, according to sentencing documents. Skillingstad’s lack of criminal history played a role in her shortened sentence.

Spokane County Jail records show Skillingstad served about eight months before her release in March of 2014.

“I don’t want to be the angry old guy the rest of my life over stuff like this,” Dwayne Widener said. “But damn it, for her own good, I hope she has to serve some time.”