She drove crazy after drinking, charges say, and killed a Fircrest man walking his dog
A woman accused of driving drunk while bringing a friend home from University Place, then crashing into a parked car on a residential street in Fircrest, killing a 70-year-old man walking his dog, was charged Thursday.
Court documents state the driver was barreling down Claremont Street the morning of Nov. 28 at nearly 60 mph and briefly went airborne as she crossed the intersection of Alameda Avenue, where the posted speed limit is 25 mph. The car landed and accelerated into a parked Toyota Highlander, which struck the pedestrian.
Kassandra Alexis Soria, 24, was charged in Pierce County Superior Court with vehicular homicide and DUI vehicular assault. An arraignment date has not been set.
She is charged in the death of Robert Riler of Fircrest. He died the day after the crash of multiple blunt-force injuries, according to the Pierce County medical examiner.
Soria and the friend she was driving home were also injured in the crash. According to charging documents, her friend told detectives they had been hanging out and drinking since midnight the night before the crash. Emergency responders noted Soria was “incoherent” at the scene of the crash and both smelled of intoxicants.
The defendant’s blood was drawn for testing, and results are pending.
Charging documents gave this account:
Officers from Fircrest Police Department responded about 6:18 a.m. that day to the 700 block of Claremont Street for a report of an injury collision.
When officers arrived minutes later, they found a gray Dodge Magnum halfway into bushes on the north side of the street and a man comforting a woman crying in pain on the ground near the driver’s side door.
The woman, later identified as Soria, had a compound ankle fracture with bone exposed. The man was a passenger in the Dodge.
While police called for medical aid, an officer tended to a pedestrian who was struck by a parked vehicle the Dodge Magnum crashed into. Police reported that the pedestrian, Riler, was conscious at the scene but did not know what happened.
Riler was transported to St. Joseph Hospital with serious injuries and internal bleeding. He died from his injuries the next day.
The Toyota Highlander that hit him was badly damaged and found resting on a bush halfway into the yard of a residence.
One officer tried to ask the defendant what happened, but according to the probable cause statement, Soria was “incoherent and smelled of intoxicants.” Police also talked with the woman’s passenger, who said Soria was driving them from somewhere in University Place. The man was taken to the hospital for a fractured nose.
A warrant was obtained to draw and test Soria’s blood for intoxicants.
The night before the crash, Soria’s passenger was staying at a friend’s house in University Place, the man later told a Washington State Patrol detective. Around midnight, he called Soria and asked her to come over.
The two spent the early hours of Nov. 28 drinking and “playing around and stuff,” the man told the detective. Between 4 and 4:30 a.m., he asked Soria to give him a ride home. The man said they got in the car and he “promptly” fell asleep in the passenger seat . He woke up to the collision and Soria’s screams.
The day after the crash, a Fircrest detective learned a 911 call came in three minutes before the collision reporting a reckless driver in a silver Dodge Magnum near the 3500 block of Bridgeport Way West in University Place.
The detective followed up with the woman who called 911, and she said she was sitting in her car on a break from work when about 6:10 a.m. she saw the Dodge speeding north. Then, the vehicle swerved over the median and was driving on the wrong side of the road.
The car swerved back to the correct side of the road once it neared the intersection of Bridgeport Way West and 35th Street West, the caller told the detective. She lost sight of the vehicle as it continued north.
Detectives obtained data for the airbag control module in Soria’s vehicle, which showed neither occupant was wearing a seat belt and that there was no effective braking before the collision, prosecutor’s wrote in the charging document. The car was going 67 mph when the airbags were deployed.
This story was originally published January 14, 2022 at 2:00 PM.
