Tacoma driver accused of swerving onto sidewalk, fatally hitting woman on July 4
A Tacoma woman is accused of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol on July Fourth on Pacific Avenue, where she lost control of her car, went onto a sidewalk and fatally struck a pedestrian.
Ashley Amber Kelly, 39, was charged Monday with vehicular homicide in Pierce County Superior Court. Commissioner Barbara McInvaille ordered her held in jail on $300,000 bail. An attorney for Kelly was not yet listed in court records.
The collision was reported at about 6:40 p.m. near Pacific Avenue and 143rd Street South in Parkland. Kelly was in a 2001 Hyundai Elantra going north when witnesses reported seeing the woman’s head out of the window. According to the probable cause document, Kelly swerved onto a sidewalk for about 25 yards, struck a light pole and then hit a woman walking on the sidewalk.
The Hyundai came to a stop in a ditch about 25 yards from where the pedestrian was struck.
Emergency personnel provided CPR to the woman, but she was declared dead at the scene. The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet publicly identified her. Troopers reported she was a 40-year-old woman from Ocean Shores.
Kelly allegedly told responding Washington State Patrol troopers that she lost control of the vehicle, stating that it would not slow down and would not stop accelerating. She said she tried to jump out of the moving car but was unable to.
Troopers noted that Kelly said she tried to tell the pedestrian to move out of the way, according to court documents.
“Kelly stated ‘If she would have listened to me she would be alive,’” a trooper noted in a report.
Kelly’s preliminary breath test at the scene was 0.00. However, troopers also saw aluminum foil with burnt residue on it inside the Elantra along with a syringe on the floor of the driver’s side and a plastic bag with a white substance inside.
Kelly also allegedly removed a glass container with a “white powdery rock substance” from her pocket and a small bag containing a white substance before she was placed under arrest for DUI, according to the probable cause document. Kelly allegedly said she took them from the car and they did not belong to her.
Troopers obtained a warrant to draw Kelly’s blood, which was completed about two-and-a-half hours after the collision.
Kelly has two prior felony convictions, according to court records, for a drug offense from 2005 and unlawfully possessing a firearm in 2014.
