KELSO, Wash. — A former college student who survived a car crash that killed three of his friends in 2001 testified that they didn’t have time to react to a sport utility vehicle careening toward their car.
Eric Haynes, now 30, was sitting in the passenger seat as his friend, Brandon Clements, veered right to try to avoid the collision.
“There wasn’t much room to go, or time,” Haynes told a Cowlitz County jury hearing testimony against fellow Washington State University student Frederick Russell, the driver of the SUV. “For sure, he saved my life.”
Killed were Clements, 22, of Wapato, a WSU senior; and fellow WSU students Stacy Morrow, 21, of Milton, and Ryan Sorensen, 21, of Westport. Three others were badly injured: Kara Eichelsdoerfer, then 21, of Aberdeen; John Wagner, then 21, of Harrington; and Sameer Ranade, then 20, of Kennewick. Haynes, of Spokane, was the only person in the car who walked away without serious injuries.
Russell is charged with vehicular homicide, accused of being drunk, speeding, and trying to pass in a no-passing zone. Russell was on the U.S. Marshals Service’s “Most Wanted” list after he fled to Ireland following his arrest and release in 2001. He was found in 2005 and later extradited to the United States.
His trial, moved across the state to Kelso from Whitman County in southeast Washington because of extensive news coverage, began last week and is expected to take at least three weeks.
Haynes told jurors how he tried to get the worst-injured out of the car but was unable to because it was sandwiched between Russell’s Blazer and rock walls.
He describing helping Wagner to the side of the road and asking passing motorists to go get help. Medical officials testified Monday that Clements, Morrow and her boyfriend, Sorensen, probably died immediately.
“I could kind of tell at the time they probably hadn’t made it,” Haynes said of the three dead, his voice cracking. “At that point, I couldn’t really help.”
Washington State Patrol Trooper Michael Murphy testified that while interviewing Russell in the hospital, the defendant had the odor of alcohol on his breath and bloodshot, watery eyes and that his account of the accident — that an oncoming sports car veered into his lane and sent him off the road to the right — did not match the scene.
Russell’s attorney, Francisco Duarte, noted that Murphy did not give Russell a sobriety test in the hospital and that nobody interviewed reported Russell as having slurred speech or delayed motor skills.
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