Man sentenced for Puyallup drunk-driving crash that killed his wife
A man has been sentenced for crashing his car into a guard rail while driving drunk in Puyallup in 2019, sending the vehicle down an embankment and killing his 52-year-old wife.
Jeffrey Lepley, 51 was sentenced to eight years, six months in prison in Pierce County Superior Court for DUI vehicular homicide, the high end of the sentencing range, in line with what prosecutors requested.
A Pierce County jury found Lepley guilty in October.
According to the state’s sentencing memorandum, Lepley became intoxicated while having brunch with his wife and drinking “bottomless mimosas” on July 14, 2019.
He then got behind the wheel of his Jaguar with his wife, Trisha Lepley, in the passenger seat.
Court filings show Lepley’s wife had filed to divorce him in May 2019. She died before it was finalized and the divorce filing was dismissed in October of that year.
Lepley was driving on Pioneer Way East when the crash occurred that afternoon. According to charging papers filed in August 2020, Lepley came to a curve in the road and crossed the center line, then over corrected, sending the car into a slide where it collided with a guard rail and went down an embankment.
The car rolled and came to a stop upside-down about 30 yards from the road.
Investigators said Lepley was driving faster than the 35 mph speed limit based on evidence at the scene. Lepley was transported to Tacoma General Hospital and had his blood drawn later that day. The toxicology report later showed Lepley’s blood-alcohol content was 0.19 percent, higher than the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
Lepley suffered a laceration to his ear, and his wife died at the scene.
In a letter of support submitted to the court Tuesday, Lepley’s girlfriend, Tami Coutu, called Lepley a good and loving person who lost everything with one bad choice.
“Since the day of the accident, Jeff has been in his own personal prison,” Coutu wrote. “Jeff has lost everything, he regrets his decisions that day deeply.”
In a personal injury lawsuit filed in August 2020, the estate of Trisha Lepley sued her husband and now-closed Tacoma bar Pacific Grill where the two went before the crash, accusing the establishment of over-serving Jeffrey Lepley alcohol during the bar’s Sunday “Boozy Brunch.”
In a response, the bar denied that the crash occurred due to over service of alcohol and denied negligence. It also denied that the two left “immediately” prior to the crash, only agreeing that Jeffrey and Trisha Lepley were patrons at the establishment that day.
A trial related to the lawsuit is scheduled for Feb. 28.
In a victim impact statement submitted to the court Dec. 2, Jeffrey Lepley’s daughter, Madison Brenenstahl, said her father was a “narcissistic alcoholic” who cheated on her mother and blamed others for his problems. She said she felt like a piece of her died when she lost her mother.
“Jeff was never a grieving widower, he might play that role for people to feel sympathy for him, but he wasn’t sorry for what he did and he knew what he was doing when he chose to speed into that guardrail,” Brenenstahl wrote.
In the state’s sentencing memorandum, prosecutors said Lepley did not take steps to engage in substance use disorder treatment while his case pended.
