LYNNWOOD — A Lynnwood man was sentenced Thursday to 4½ years in prison for fleeing after hitting an elderly man with a neighbor’s pickup in 2020.
In the years before the deadly crash, Michael Tallman had reportedly been having severe health issues. One day in 2015, he came into work at Boeing, but he couldn’t figure out how to log in to his computer.
“That was sort of the start of a kind of cascade of various issues, both cognitively as well as physically,” Tallman’s defense attorney Laura Martin said in court Thursday.
That same year, he started having seizures. He had a case manager from the Verdant Health Commission in Lynnwood who helped figure out what was wrong and get the right medication.
Eventually, he was diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain condition often associated with repeated head injuries in sports like boxing and football. The case manager determined Tallman, now 55, was significantly impaired, Martin wrote in court papers.
On Nov. 30, 2020, Tallman’s neighbor asked for a favor, according to court papers. The neighbor needed to get his truck to a repair shop and asked if Tallman could help him get back home.
That night, Tallman suffered a seizure. When he woke up, his mouth was full of blood from biting his tongue, Martin said. Seizures would cause Tallman to be confused and disoriented for a while after the episodes. He’d recently sold his cars and recognized he shouldn’t be driving.
But on the morning of Dec. 1, he got in the truck to follow his neighbor to the repair shop. At sentencing Thursday, Tallman said that was “probably one of the worst decisions I’ve made in a long time.”
At 8:24 a.m., Jung Moon, 80, was on his daily walk on the shoulder of 35th Avenue West. A witness saw a blue Chevy pickup swerve into the shoulder, hit Moon and swerve back into the road to drive away, prosecutors alleged. When medics arrived, Moon was dead.
Ten minutes after the crash, a Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy found the neighbor’s blue Chevy pickup driving a few miles away from the scene. The deputy pulled it over, according to court documents.
Tallman moved slowly and stared at the deputy. It appeared to the deputy that Tallman “was not even seeing him,” deputy prosecutor Tobin Darrow wrote in court papers. The suspect was arrested.
Tallman reportedly told investigators “unfortunate events happened” on the way. The pickup had damage to the hood and the grill. Tallman reported it was old. The neighbor disputed this, telling police there was no prior damage.
An evaluator concluded Tallman was under the influence of a drug. Tallman told the evaluator he smokes marijuana daily. A test later showed his blood had 5.5 nanograms of active THC per milliliter, just over the legal limit. His attorney noted Tallman had used marijuana for years, so he had a high tolerance. She argued his behavior was due to the seizure the night before, not any drug.
When the evaluator told Tallman he’d hit a pedestrian, the defendant responded, “Wow, that guy must have been upset,” and laughed. He went on to claim he didn’t hit anyone, according to court records.
Later that month, Snohomish County prosecutors charged Tallman with vehicular homicide while under the influence and hit-and-run, both felonies. Tallman had no prior felony history. He had four misdemeanor violations out of King County, including for driving under the influence. All were more than 20 years ago.
In early July, Tallman entered what is known as an Alford plea, meaning he did not admit to the facts as alleged, but acknowledged he likely would have been convicted based on the evidence. He pleaded to causing a fatal crash while driving with disregard for the safety of others, not while under the influence.
Under state sentencing guidelines, he faced between 41 and 54 months. In a plea agreement, prosecutors and Tallman’s defense attorney recommended the high end of that range.
Superior Court Judge Karen Moore heeded that agreement.
“The saying, ‘No good deed goes unpunished,’ is sort-of tongue-in-cheek, but it seems particularly applicable in this particular case,” she said, “as you’re trying to do a favor for a friend, and in doing so, you take a life.”
Tallman had been held in the Snohomish County Jail on $250,000 bail since the day of the crash. While in custody, he suffered multiple seizures, Martin said, but his condition improved with the proper medication.
Jake Goldstein-Street: 425-339-3439; jake.goldstein-street@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @GoldsteinStreet.
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