Pedestrian killed by suspected impaired driver in Airway Heights

A pedestrian was struck and killed by a vehicle as he was walking along U.S. Highway 2 in Airway Heights early Wednesday morning.

The driver of the vehicle, Robert J. Bitcon, called police at 1:15 a.m., saying that “he heard a noise and believed he may have hit someone, or possibly an animal,” a Spokane County Sheriff’s Office news release said. Court documents said that Bitcon’s car had damage and blood on the front of it.

Bitcon, 22, reportedly said that he did not find anything in an initial search of the area and waited for police in a parking lot nearby. Court documents say that Bitcon said he had been driving from Davenport to North Spokane and “guessed he fell asleep at the wheel.”

Police found the man Bitcon hit – identified in court documents as Donald Baily – lying in a ditch on the south side of U.S. 2, a block west of Garfield Road. Baily had already died from his injuries, court documents say.

Bitcon told deputies that he had taken a marijuana edible at 1 p.m. and drank a beer at around 10 p.m., records show. He said he used prescribed methadone at around 11 p.m. Deputies performed a sobriety test and concluded that Bitcon was “unable to operate a motor vehicle safely.” He was arrested and charged with vehicular homicide before being booked into Spokane County Jail.

In the past six months there have been 15 pedestrians killed, according to the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s office.

The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office requests that any witnesses to the early morning crash contact Cpl. Todd Miller at (509) 477-3195, along with anybody with video footage of the crash.