The driver of the bus that hit and killed a young woman on Vashon Highway last September will not face criminal charges.
The King County Prosecutor’s Office recently determined that because the driver had a medical issue that caused him to veer and hit the car being driven by 22-year-old Katie Chale, he will not be charged with vehicular homicide.
In a March 9 memo on the decision, Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Amy Freedheim noted that vehicular homicide charges can only be filed when a driver was impaired by drugs or alcohol, drove recklessly or showed disregard for others’ safety when the accident occurred.
“In the present case, there is no evidence that the bus driver was aware a medical condition would interfere with his ability to drive,” she wrote.
The accident occurred at about 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 17, when three charter buses with the company Horizon Coach Lines were taking Seattle schoolchildren to Camp Sealth. The buses were headed south on Vashon Highway south of Burton when the driver of one of the buses, a 66-year-old Seattle man, suddenly veered across the center line, narrowly missing one oncoming car and then hitting Chale’s vehicle before driving through a hedge and into a yard.
The driver later told King County Sheriff’s Office investigators that he had momentarily passed out when the accident occurred. According to documents from the investigation, he said he felt ill that morning before leaving the school in Seattle, but had taken an antacid and felt better. As he was approaching the 24700 block of Vashon Highway, he again felt ill, and began looking for a place to pull over. The next thing he remembered was driving through the hedge, and he stopped the bus after he came to.
The driver said a doctor later told him that gastric distress had resulted in a drop in blood pressure, which had caused him to pass out.
Investigators also interviewed witnesses of the accident and obtained the drivers’ medical records from Harborview, where he was taken after the accident. The records confirmed that he had likely passed out as a result of a gastric illness.
Investigators and the prosecuting attorney noted that the driver was not under the influence and had reportedly appeared stunned after the accident. No one on the bus was seriously injured.
Chale was transported to Harborview in critical condition and later died in the hospital. She was a 2010 graduate of Vashon High School who had recently graduated from the University of Portland and returned home to Vashon.
Horizon Coach Lines is the third largest privately owned coach bus service in North America and has nearly 600 drivers. At the time of the Vashon accident, it been involved in three fatal crashes in the last two years, but had an overall safety rating of satisfactory from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which rates carriers as either satisfactory, conditional or unsatisfactory.
