Man accused of racing teenage driver charged in connection to fatal Spanaway wreck
A man accused of racing a teenage driver in Spanaway has been charged in connection with a wreck that killed two people.
Prosecutors charged 27-year-old Cody William Urquhart with hit-and-run and two counts of vehicular homicide Wednesday.
He’s scheduled to be arraigned next month.
The Aug. 12 wreck killed 58-year-old John Lund of Puyallup and a 16-year-old girl identified in court records as G.S.
Charging papers give this account of what happened:
A 17-year-old boy from Tacoma passed Urquhart and ran a stop sign near state Route 7 and 174th Street South.
The teenager hit Lund’s pickup, the two vehicles rolled, and Lund died at the scene.
Investigators found the teenager’s car was likely going about 100 mph at the time of the wreck.
The 17-year-old driver and his 16-year-old passenger were taken to St. Joseph Medical Center. She later died from her injuries.
Prosecutors said the 17-year-old is being charged as a juvenile with two counts of vehicular homicide.
Urquhart left the scene, and soon after a State Patrol trooper found him and identified him as the third driver a witness had seen racing the teenager before the wreck.
The detective reported a “witness ‘described the vehicles as racing each other. I asked him to define racing in his terms and he said they were ‘hauling’ and he estimated both vehicles speed at or near 100 mph,’” the probable cause statement said.
Urquhart agreed to speak with a detective. He allegedly said he had left because he cut his hand trying to open the door of the teenager’s car and because police were at the scene. He said he went to the teenager’s car because someone else was already trying to help the pickup driver.
The detective reported that Urquhart said the teenager “... passed me and then I sped up. It was kind of an anger thing. He might have thought it was a race, but there was no race intended ... it was an anger thing,” the declaration for determination of probable cause said.
