Algona pays $1.8 Million to Widow for 1999 Drunk Driving Fatality
Posted by
Chelsea GilbertSeptember 21, 2007 8:00 AMEight years after her husband was killed by drunk driver, Tracy Enoch-Jevne, widow Susan McGuire received a $1.8 million settlement from the city of Algona.
The settlement stems from McGuire's claim that the woman who hit her husband on December 2, 1999 should have been in jail at the time of the accident. Enoch-Jevne already had four drunken-driving convictions on her record, accrued between 1966 and 1999, when she struck Mike McGuire in her pickup in Buckley, Pierce County.
According to one of Susan McGuire's attorneys, at the time of the accident Enoch-Jevne still had at least two month left to serve on a sentence stemming from a 1996 drunken-driving conviction in Algona. However, Enoch-Jevne was transferred from a Pierce County jail to a King County jail in October 1999 and, due to errors by the city of Algona, King County and the state Department of Corrections, did not serve the remainder of her sentence.
Steve Bulzomi [one of Susan McGuire's attorney's] said the city of Algona should have made King County aware of the remaining sentence that Enoch-Jevne was supposed to serve. Likewise, he said, King County should have reviewed Enoch-Jevne's records and discovered the unserved jail time.Instead, Bulzomi said, a King County judge gave Enoch-Jevne credit for time served on an unrelated DUI charge and released her after just three days in custody.
"The city and the county were responsible for mistakenly releasing Enoch-Jevne," Bulzomi said.
The $1.8 million settlement was announced Monday, September 10.
Currently, McGuire is continuing to pursue another lawsuit against the Department of Corrections. This lawsuit, scheduled to go to trial in December, alleges that the state should have re-arrested Enoch-Jevne after she was released in October 1999 because she violated the conditions of her release.
Read more: David Bowermaster, The Seattle Times
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