He chased car he reported stolen, causing fatal Pierce County wreck. Here’s his sentence
A 29-year-old man accused of causing a fatal three-car crash in Pierce County while chasing a driver whom he reported had stolen his car pleaded guilty Monday and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Steven Curtis Stanley Putney pleaded guilty in Superior Court to vehicular homicide and failure to remain at an accident resulting in death for the Jan. 17 collision on 176th Street East in Frederickson. He admitted to driving with disregard for the safety of others when he caused the death of 64-year-old Mary Delreco of Orting.
Delreco was a passenger in a white Subaru driven by her daughter when the car ran a red light at 70th Avenue East at high speed and struck a pickup doing a U-turn. A witness reported that Putney had been driving aggressively in an Econoline van and trying to run the Subaru off the road when he also ran the light and allegedly hit the Subaru.
The man in the pickup truck and his 2-year-old son were not injured. Delreco was pronounced dead at the scene, according to court records, and her daughter was hospitalized with serious injuries.
Putney contacted 911 on the day of the wreck and reported that the Subaru was stolen and that he’d been chasing it at the time of the collision, according to charging documents. Dispatchers told him to return to the scene, but Putney said he couldn’t, claiming that his van had also been stolen.
The defendant’s attorney, Bryan Hershman, told The News Tribune on Tuesday that Putney’s van never touched the Subaru.
At sentencing, Hersman said Putney expressed remorse and regret for a lack of judgment in the incident.
“Notwithstanding what happened, he could have pulled back and maybe stopped this thing,” Hershman said. “Even if they were just running with a stolen car anyway, who knows, maybe if he had pulled back they would have slowed down.”
“At the end of the day someone was senselessly killed. This just didn’t have to happen,” Hershman added.
The Subaru was registered to Putney, according to charging documents, but its driver and another person in the car later told Sheriff’s Department investigators that Putney had given the driver permission to use it. The driver reported that she was at a residence in South Hill with Delreco, Putney and a few other people when Putney told her to drive to his Eatonville home and that he would follow her in his van.
On the way, the Subaru driver reported that she slowed down to wait for Putney to catch up to her, but he then blocked her in. She and an occupant of the car claimed that two men got out of his van with baseball bats and started hitting the Subaru. Putney denied that happened in a phone call made from the Pierce County Jail, court records show.
The Subaru driver told investigators that she fled from Putney when the vehicle was being struck with baseball bats and that Putney pursued her. The driver said that Putney then pushed his van into the back of the Subaru while she drove on 176th Street, and she ran a red light to try to escape him when the collision occurred.
The sentence that Judge Pro Tempore James Orlando imposed was at the high end of the standard sentencing range for failure to remain at an accident resulting in death, which in this case was 46-61 months.
Prosecutors and the defense agreed to recommend the high end as part of a plea agreement. Putney has already served 304 days in jail.
