EVERETT — The 15-year-old told jurors she had never huffed aerosol computer cleaner until that night in 2015.
Her older sister and her sister’s friends were doing it. They asked if she wanted to try.
“Sure, it couldn’t hurt anybody,” the girl recalled thinking.
Hours later, her 17-year-old sister was lying dead in a thicket of brambles off U.S. 2 outside Monroe, having been ejected through the front windshield of a Sultan man’s car.
The car had veered off the highway, catapulted 120 feet through the air and tumbled end over end until coming to a rest in a gully.
Madison Whiddon landed about 30 feet from the car. She suffered a head injury “inconsistent with life,” Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Tobin Darrow told jurors Tuesday during opening statements. Madison died instantly upon hitting the ground, he added.
Her younger sister, then 14, also had been ejected from the car, along with another girl, 15. They were injured and stuck in the brambles until firefighters used chain saws to cut a path to their location. A fourth passenger had been wearing her seat belt. She suffered a broken facial bone. The driver, Anthony Box, also had been wearing his seat belt and was not seriously hurt.
Box, 18, told Washington State Patrol troopers he’d passed out right before the crash. No, he hadn’t been drinking. But his pupils were dilated and he seemed a bit off, Darrow told the jury.
A State Patrol sergeant noticed multiple cans of computer cleaner inside and around the car.
A trooper evaluated Box at the hospital and concluded that the Sultan teen was under the influence of something. Box’s blood was drawn and tested positive for difluoroethane, a chemical found in computer cleaner. Once inhaled, difluoroethane cuts off oxygen to the brain. Users report feeling a sense of euphoria. Inhaling the cleaner also can cause people to black out.
Box is accused of driving under the influence of difluoroethane and causing Madison’s Nov. 12, 2015, death. He is charged with vehicular homicide and three counts of vehicular assault for the injuries caused to the other girls.
Public defender Gabe Rothstein told jurors that Box, now 19, had huffed earlier in the night but was not inhaling the cleaner while he was driving the girls from Sultan to Monroe and back again.
“At no time did my client intentionally huff difluoroethane while in the car,” Rothstein said.
The truth, he said, is hard to hear for some, especially Madison’s family and friends. Madison was spraying the cleaner in the car, robbing the small space of oxygen, the public defender said. His client inadvertently inhaled the cleaner and then passed out, Rothstein said.
“The state wants you to believe it was intentional,” he said. “That’s not what happened. It’s easier to blame Anthony. Nobody wants to speak ill of the dead. No one wants to speak ill of a friend.”
Rothstein went on to criticize the police investigation, saying troopers didn’t collect the cans of cleaner at the time. The only reason detectives have three cans is because the tow truck driver threw them in the wrecked car, Rothstein said.
He also told jurors that the State Patrol crime lab does not measure the level of difluoroethane in a blood sample. Scientists only measure whether the chemical is present or not. They won’t be able to say if Box had levels that would impair his driving.
Madison’s sister told jurors that Box inhaled the cleaner on the way to Monroe, even pretending to pass out while he was driving. She asked him not to use while he was driving, the girl said.
Box, she said, had his own can when they left Walmart. He was using it on the way back home, the girl said. She told jurors that Madison was spraying the can into the air.
“Did it have an effect on you?” Darrow asked.
“No,” the girl said.
The jury is scheduled to hear more testimony Wednesday. The trial is expected to stretch into next week.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
