SEATTLE — A 68-year-old Sammamish woman was charged Friday, accused of mixing wine and sleeping pills when she crashed her Jeep through her lakefront home in May, killing her husband and son-in-law and seriously injuring her daughter.
Carol Fedigan, who also is accused of endangering her young grandson who was seated on her lap at the time of the crash, was briefly booked into the King County Jail in May but was conditionally released, jail records show.
“We had to wait for the toxicology report to come back,” said Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, explaining why it took nearly seven months for his office to file charges.
Fedigan is charged with two counts of vehicular homicide, one count of vehicular assault and one count of reckless endangerment, according to court records. In addition, the vehicular homicide and assault charges each carry a special enhancement that the offenses were committed when a child passenger under age 16 was an occupant of the vehicle – which if proven, would automatically add a year to her sentence.
Prosecutors will ask a judge to set bail at $250,000 at Fedigan’s Dec. 18 arraignment, when she will presumably be booked back into jail, Donohoe said.
Fedigan could face a prison term of about 10 to 13 years if convicted as charged, he said.
Senior Deputy Prosecutor Amy Freedheim wrote in charging documents that detectives learned Fedigan had “a significant alcohol problem” and her family had staged an unsuccessful intervention in an attempt to get Fedigan to seek treatment a few months before the May 16 crash.
Detectives also found notes left by her husband, 70-year-old David Walker, indicating that Fedigan was abusing her prescription for the sleep aid Ambien, Freedheim wrote.
Fedigan’s blood was drawn four hours after the crash, and her blood alcohol content was measured at 0.091 percent, Freedheim wrote in charging documents, noting it would have been “much higher” at the time of the 7:57 p.m. collision. The amount of Ambien in her system “is inconsistent with a therapeutic dose taken at bedtime the evening before,” according to Freedheim.
Fedigan was having dinner with her husband, son-in-law Sean Berry, 41, and daughter Megan Berry, 34, at their home on Lake Sammamish when she decided to move her Jeep into her driveway from where it was parked on a grass strip across the lane from the house, charging papers say. The other adults remained seated in the dining room.
She took her nearly 3-year-old grandson with her, seating him on her lap behind the wheel of her brand new Jeep, according to the charges. Neither was wearing a seat belt.
Data recovered from Fedigan’s Jeep showed “the defendant was fully accelerating the car and only touched the brake momentarily near the end of the event,” say the charges, noting that Fedigan apparently mistook the accelerator for the brake.
The Jeep plowed through the house, smashed over the dinner table, continued through the house’s rear windows, over a covered patio, down some stairs to a deck, and through a railing, with the front end of the Jeep coming to rest in Lake Sammamish, the charges say.
Walker died at the scene while Sean Berry suffered a traumatic brain injury and died at Harborview Medical Center two days later, according to the charges.
Megan Berry, who “was able to crawl through the debris” and into the driveway, suffered facial fractures, a collapsed lung and other injuries, the charges say. Fedigan and her grandson were not injured, according to charging papers.
Police said after she was taken to Harborview for a blood draw, Fedigan told a deputy, “it wasn’t because of drinking, it’s because it’s a new car,” the charges say.
But according to the charges, “a full inspection of the vehicle showed no mechanical or electrical problems before this collision.”
