A 20-year-old Warm Springs, Oregon, woman was sentenced recently to 2½ years in prison for a drunk-driving crash that injured one of her passengers.
On a night in October 2010, the woman was drinking heavily with friends on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, prosecutors said. Sometime in the early-morning hours, she and a few others left the house where they'd been drinking. One of the woman's friends, who was sober, saw that the woman was drunk and asked her to let him drive, but she refused.
It was about 2:45 a.m. when the woman, who prosecutors said was speeding at the time, began looking for a CD to listen to when she lost control of the car and crashed. The car flipped and rolled two times, ejecting one of the passengers. He died as a result of his injuries.
Nearly three hours after the crash, a blood draw showed that the woman driving had a blood alcohol content of .189 percent, well above the legal driving limit. The two surviving passengers told police after the crash that she was "driving too crazy." According to an accident reconstruction expert, the woman was driving at least 48 mph in a 35 mph zone.
The woman pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in August 2011. She was sentenced this month to 30 months in prison, followed by a mandatory six-month residential alcohol treatment program.
Alcohol abuse on the Warm Springs reservation is known to be high, but anyone can make the mistake of drinking and driving. And sometimes, as in this case, the results are deadly. The only advantage to her being sentenced to prison and alcohol treatment at such a young age is that it may help her turn her life around and prevent her from abusing alcohol in the future.
Source: KTVZ.com, "Warm Springs Woman Sentenced in Fatal DUII Crash," March 12, 2012
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