EVERETT — Matias Trefault’s grandmother asked him in March 2019 to get away from his friends and start treatment again for his drug use — and he often thinks about how cold he was when he impulsively told her to leave him alone, he recalled in court documents.
A few days later, Trefault was driving south on Evergreen Way when he sharply turned into the northbound lane, crashing into a Toyota Corolla that Reynold Joel was driving.
Joel died at the scene. He was 27.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Langbehn sentenced Trefault to 5 years and 10 months in prison Thursday.
Trefault, then 19, would replay the collision in his mind, asking why it was not him that died.
“I wasn’t doing anything with my life except drugs and I didn’t deserve to live,” he would say, according to court documents.
Trefault, now 23, of Kirkland, stayed at the scene with his passenger and cooperated with law enforcement, court documents said.
After the crash, he reportedly told police his phone was mounted to a vent on his dashboard while he was traveling south in the 10800 block of Evergreen Way in Everett. The phone fell to the floor, and he reached down to grab it. It was the last thing he remembered before the air bags deployed and everything went black.
Squares of folded tinfoil were found in his pockets, according to the charges filed in Superior Court. Foil is often used to smoke heroin. Trefault admitted he was a drug user, but reportedly told police he hadn’t used heroin in days.
Police observed that Trefault’s speech was slow and slurred, the charges said. Officers saw a jar hanging from his necklace, with a clear rock inside. It tested positive for meth, according to court documents.
Trefault fell asleep in a holding cell while police applied for a search warrant, court papers said. Once a judge gave them authority to draw his blood, the defendant swayed as he stood, like he would “fall over,” the charges said.
Medical staff tried to draw blood from Trefault, but were unable to because his veins had been overused for drug injection, according to the charges. So they had to find a vein in his neck.
In August 2020, a plea hearing was scheduled for Trefault for one count of vehicular homicide while under the influence, but days before the hearing, his blood sample was included among other samples that had been contaminated at the state patrol crime lab. Trefault still proceeded with his guilty plea on March 23.
Prosecutors have found it difficult to prove how impaired someone was by meth, as opposed to alcohol. In the bloodstream, morphine is often a product of a metabolized opioid, like heroin. Deputy prosecutor Tobin Darrow noted in the charges when meth users are “crashing” from a high, they can show signs of fatigue and inattentiveness.
Trefault’s toxicology report stated, per liter, his blood had 0.056 milligrams of amphetamine, 0.24 mg of methamphetamine and 0.018 mg of morphine. He also tested positive for clonazepam, a sedative.
His defense attorney, Laura Shaver, argued there is no scientific literature that can conclude the degree of impairment based on the blood concentration of methamphetamine. She said those concentration levels cannot determine what effect the drugs had on a person’s body.
Under state sentencing guidelines, Trefault faced 6½ to 8½ years in prison. The state recommended the low end of that sentence. The defense wished for a sentence of 20 months, citing that if he had gone to trial, the evidence suggested he could have been convicted of a different crime of driving under the influence with disregard for the safety of others, where 20 months is the high end.
Judge Langbehn said there was nothing she could do that would replace Joel, but the defendant’s youthfulness at the time of the crash and his “remarkable turnaround” following the collision justified the exceptional sentence.
Trefault is now three years and 10 months sober. In a letter to the court, Trefault wrote that sobriety has changed his life, and he is not the same person he was as a 19-year-old addict.
“Words cannot describe my remorse,” he said. “Every day I know I caused unimaginable suffering to (his) friends and family, and every day I wish none of this ever happened and that (he) was still alive.”
In the crowded courtroom Thursday, Joel’s widow Loretta Andrike testified she did not want to ask for a longer sentence, only justice for her husband.
“I feel for (my children) when I watch kids around them play with their dads. I can’t fill that void,” she said. “But I feel with every fiber of my being, that if my husband was alive he would have gone out of his way to Mr. Trefault to let him know it’s OK, because he’s forgiven him already. As hard as it is, on behalf of my daughters and I, we forgive you too.”
Jonathan Tall: 425-339-3486; jonathan.tall@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @EDHJonTall.
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