He caused a wreck that killed a single father in Fife. Now he’s been sentenced.

Kevin Travis Cheetham hopes he can learn some things from the man he killed.

He told a Superior Court judge Thursday that he doesn’t remember causing the Fife wreck that killed 38-year-old Tanner Munden last year but that he’s since learned Munden was a single dad.

“My understanding is that Tanner was the best father and stood by his family and supported them,” he told Judge Stephanie Arend during his sentencing hearing. “I hope that I can learn from his legacy.”

Cheetham hadn’t taken his seizure medication prior to the wreck and was going 70 mph in a 35 mph zone at the time, Pierce County prosecutors said.

The 27-year-old pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide, and Arend gave him a low-end sentence of a year and three months in prison.

Munden’s loved ones filled the courtroom to watch.

Some spoke before Cheetham was sentenced, mostly about Munden as a parent. He was raising two sons, 12 and almost 14, and he had a 15-year-old daughter he visited.

“He was a good daddy,” grandpa James Yates said of Munden, and “one of the best friends that I ever had.”

Munden stayed home to meet his sons’ needs. One suffered from cancer at a young age, and the other required a feeding tube.

“He was raising them full time,” Munden’s stepsister, Laura Rogers told the court.

Addressing Tanner, she said: “You made a choice, and when you made that choice, you took away all of Tanner’s choices.”

The four-car wreck happened about 1 p.m. March 13 when Cheetham was driving on 70th Avenue East near Valley Avenue East.

He crashed into Munden's sedan, as it was stopped at a red light.

That pushed the sedan into the back of an SUV, which hit a box truck.

Munden died at the scene, and Cheetham was taken to the hospital because he was dazed. The other drivers weren't injured.

“I don’t remember any of this,” Cheetham told Arend. “This is not me.”

He apologized to Munden’s family and said the last thing he remembers before the wreck is leaving a fast-food restaurant where he’d been having lunch with his mother.

Defense attorney Michael Frans asked Arend to consider giving Cheetham a more lenient sentence than the low end of the standard range, which had been asked for by deputy prosecutor Neil Horibe. The 27-year-old doesn’t have so much as a speeding ticket on his record prior to the fatal wreck, and he will never drive again, Frans said.

Frans said Cheetham started suffering seizures in 2015 after he was the victim of a different car wreck.

The attorney said he was shocked at the lack of medical follow-up and information the young man was given in the years after the seizure medicine was prescribed.

“He’s essentially on his own, taking this medication,” Frans said.

Cheetham struggles with memory sometimes, and it was pretty clear he missed two doses of the medicine before the wreck, the attorney said.

He’s continued to have seizures since, even as he’s consistently taken the medicine, and the dosage has been increased, Frans said.

Arend said it was clear Cheetham had suffered from the prior wreck, but she agreed with the sentence Horibe recommended. The judge also said she believes “very strongly in personable responsibility.”

No one will ever know what would have happened if he’d taken the medicine, she added.

Debbie Munden, the victim’s mother, now cares for her two grandsons and realizes just how much her son did as a father.

His calendar was full of doctor’s appointments and sports practices that now fall to her.

“We used to have the perfect family,” one of the boys asked her to tell the judge. “This guy took it away.”

One of the boys wrote for a school assignment that his father was his hero because he took care of him when he was sick.

Debbie Munden said outside court her son was happiest when he got all three of his kids together. They’d take trips to Idaho, where’d they go boating, fishing and swimming in the Snake River.

Munden’s family said it’s been difficult to see Cheetham marry and become a father since the wreck.

Not everyone was ready to forgive Cheetham, but Yates told the man he had done so and that Cheetham needs to move forward with his life.

“Do the best you can,” Yates said. “... Some how, some way.”

Which, the way loves ones described it, is how Munden lived.

This story was originally published January 25, 2018 at 7:36 PM with the headline "He caused a wreck that killed a single father in Fife. Now he’s been sentenced.."