He drove drunk in Parkland and hit another car, killing man, 72. Here’s his sentence
A man has been sentenced to nearly three years in prison for driving drunk in Parkland and rear-ending a car, killing a 72-year-old man and badly injuring his wife.
Connor Reece Simmons, 24, pleaded guilty last month in Pierce County Superior Court to vehicular homicide and DUI vehicular assault for the June 12, 2021, crash on Spanaway Loop Road. According to court documents, Simmons struck the back of a Mercedes sedan at high speed that night, causing the car to crash into a tree before it came to a stop on the shoulder near 133rd Street Court East.
He was sentenced to 2 years, 10 months in prison on June 28. Judge Shelly Speir-Moss handed down the punishment, a high-end sentence for defendants prosecuted in similar cases. Court records show he does not have any prior criminal convictions.
The occupants of the car Simmons hit had to be cut out of the vehicle by emergency personnel. The driver, Stephen Randolph Shelton of Eatonville and his then-69-year-old wife were transported to a hospital, where Shelton died. It’s unclear what the extent of his wife’s injuries were, but records state her legs were pinned beneath the car’s dashboard, and the Sheriff’s Department said she was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
A Washington State Patrol trooper was one of the first people on the scene, and according to court documents, he saw Simmons exiting his SUV. The trooper reported Simmons appeared to have bloodshot eyes and slurred speech. Sheriff’s deputies arrived to take over the investigation, and Simmons was arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide and vehicular assault.
Charges were filed against the defendant more than a year after the crash when the results of toxicology testing showed Simmons’ blood-alcohol content was about 0.24, above the legal limit of 0.08.
Simmons also had a small amount of THC in his blood, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. His THC level was about 1.1 nanograms per milliliter, below the legal limit of 5 ng/ml, court records said.
In a letter written to the Shelton family three months after the fatal crash, Simmons said he was “beyond sorry” for what he’d done and the pain he’d caused them. The letter was included alongside a resume for Simmons and eight letters written in support of the defendant submitted to the court before the sentencing hearing.
“Although I know that no words of remorse could ever calm the depths of your grief, let alone undo this tragedy, I want to express my sympathy for your entire family and community who, without question, have lost more than I can even begin to understand,” Simmons wrote.
Simmons, who graduated from Bellarmine Preparatory School in 2017 and Washington State University in 2021, wrote that after the incident, everything he’d worked for in his life changed for the worse in an instant. He said he knew the same was true for the Shelton family.
