Releasee’s Car Crash Costs City $1.8 M

Government Law

Posted Sep 11, 2007, 01:29 pm CST
By Martha Neil

A city in Washington state has agreed to pay $1.8 million to the widow of a man killed eight years ago in a hit-and-run accident.

That's because the driver should have been incarcerated, but was released prematurely from jail in an Algona drunken driving case, reports the Seattle Times. Tracy Enoch-Jevne, a mother of four, was subsequently convicted of vehicular homicide over the December 1999 accident in Pierce County and sentenced to eight years in prison.

The early release apparently occurred because Enoch-Jevne had previously been sentenced in multiple drunken-driving cases. Jail officials confused her sentences and gave her credit for time served in an unrelated case, rather than requiring her to complete the sentence she should have served, according to the newspaper.

Susan McGuire, whose husband, Mike, was killed in the accident, is continuing to pursue a lawsuit against the state Department of Corrections on similar grounds. It contends that the state should have arrested Enoch-Jevne before the accident because she had violated the conditions of her release.

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