Drunken driver gets more than 3 years
Published 2:28 pm Monday, June 23, 2008
EVERETT – A habitual drunken driver from Lynnwood was sentenced this morning to more than three years behind bars for a 2007 booze-induced police chase.
Robert L. Castle, 52, already is serving more than two years for a drunken driving incident in Seattle. He faces additional charges in Snohomish and King Counties stemming from separate allegations he was driving drunk. Castle has more than 10 alcohol-related driving offenses dating back to the 1980s, court records show.
“Mr. Castle will do what Mr. Castle wants to do regardless of the cost,” Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Edirin Okoloko wrote in court documents.
Okoloko successfully encouraged Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Gerald Knight to order Castle to serve the maximum sentence under the law.
Today’s sentence was handed down from a Nov. 2007 conviction. A jury found that Castle raced away from a Washington State Patrol trooper who attempted to stop him for suspected drunken driving. The chase ended when a trooper used his car to bump Castle’s vehicle off the road.
About a month later, he was arrested again for investigation of eluding police and drunken driving. This time a he was subdued with an electric stun gun when he allegedly refused to surrender to police. He was charged in December and is expected to be arraigned soon. If he is convicted in that case, King County prosecutors will be able to charge him with felony drunken driving from an incident in December.
