A 2009 race in the street that ended in death led to a nearly two-year prison sentence Thursday for a Lynnwood man.
Jonathan Tiv, 25, pleaded guilty last month to vehicular homicide. He was racing another car in Everett on Aug. 21, 2009, when he slammed broadside into a Toyota Corolla driven by Nicholas Gorrell.
Gorrell, 25, was making a lawful turn across Evergreen Way into a parking lot. His car crumpled in the crash. The impact was so hard it left the passenger-side door where the car’s center console should be, court papers said. Gorrell died at the scene.
The young man left behind his family, who will always miss him, his mother, Kellie Van Drongelen, told Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Cowsert.
The judge said the crash could only be blamed on poor judgment, “disregard, stupidity, whatever you want to call it.”
Tiv was accompanied by his pregnant girlfriend, in the passenger seat next to him, when he crashed. His car skidded 36 feet before colliding with Gorrell’s vehicle, court papers said.
Witnesses estimated Tiv’s vehicle and the other car he was racing reached speeds of up to 85 mph before the collision. Based on the skid marks, police calculated that Tiv was traveling at least 65 mph just before the crash. The posted speed limit is 35 mph.
Deputy prosecutor Tobin Darrow said that Tiv took responsibility for the crash the night it happened and he pleaded guilty as charged.
Tiv has a 2006 conviction for robbery, and his maximum sentencing range under state guidelines was two years and three months in prison. Pursuant to the plea agreement, Darrow recommended six months less — the low-end of the range.
Cowsert spent part of Thursday’s sentencing explaining how punishment is meted out in Washington courtrooms. He’s a former longtime prosecutor who handled numerous major cases, including helping to send Darren Creekmore to prison for the 1983 abuse murder of his 3-year-old son, Eli.
Sentencing ranges are recommended by a state commission and approved by the Legislature. Cowsert recalled how when he was a prosecutor, he had a conversation with the family of a murder victim, surprised at the relatively short sentence called for under the law.
The judge Thursday said that he came to understand that no sentence is ever adequate, and that a life “is irreplaceable and impossible to value” in terms of time served in prison.
He told Gorrell’s mother that he was truly sorry for her loss.
Tiv’s sentence reflected his taking responsibility, and sparing the slain man’s family the “agony and terror” of a trial, the judge said.
Scott North: 425-339-3431; north@heraldnet.com.
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