Charges filed against Port Angeles man after hit-and-run of bicyclists on Highway 101

Published 12:01 am Friday, September 11, 2015

PORT ANGELES — Anthony J. McKenzie was charged Thursday with two counts of hit-and-run driving that resulted in an injury accident and one count of vehicular assault.

The Port Angeles man is accused of driving under the influence of drugs when he crashed a vehicle into a pair of bicyclists Monday.

The vehicular assault charge is a Class B felony punishable by a $20,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The hit-and-run charges each carry $10,000 fines and five-year prison terms.

McKenzie, 28, will be arraigned at 1:30 p.m. Sept. 18 in Clallam County Superior Court.

He remained in the county jail Thursday in lieu of bail that had been reduced from $100,000 to $25,000 by Judge Brian Coughenour.

He will be represented by Harry Gasnick of the Clallam County Public Defender office.

Gasnick said McKenzie’s initial intent of hiring an attorney was disrupted by his termination from work and his discovery that his auto insurance did not cover a criminal defense.

If he posts bond, McKenzie must submit to random drug tests by Friendship Diversion Services, refrain from driving while taking any prescription medication, not use alcohol or take drugs that have not been prescribed for him, and remain on the Olympic Peninsula.

Refrain from driving

“I’d like to state out of my own free will I’d be willing to refrain from operating a motor vehicle completely,” McKenzie, handcuffed and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, told Coughenour.

“Frankly, this whole situation has me pretty shaken up.”

Witnesses told the State Patrol that McKenzie was “swerving back and forth across the whole road” before he hit two bicyclists on the westbound shoulder of U.S. Highway 101 in Indian Valley about 8 miles west of Port Angeles late Monday and continued driving.

One of the two bicyclists remained hospitalized Thursday.

Serious condition

Jeanie M. Chellino, 54, of Channahon, Ill., was in serious condition in the intensive care unit at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Her husband, Dominick Chellino Jr., 58, also of Channahon, was treated and discharged from Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles.

Jordan R. Bond, 35, of Sequim, who had been on the road behind McKenzie, rammed McKenzie’s pickup truck and stopped him.

Bond and his girlfriend, Kristy D. Davis, 37, of Port Angeles, had been following McKenzie from the Haggen store in Port Angeles.

McKenzie allegedly “drove right down the shoulder and ran down two bikers and continued driving down shoulder away from injured bikers,” Bond wrote in a witness statement filed in court.

“Didn’t want him to kill anyone else. No traffic was coming so I crashed him off the road.”

As Bond and other witnesses removed McKenzie from the vehicle, McKenzie was “nodding off and coming to,” Bond wrote.

Probable-cause filing

McKenzie told investigators he had had back pain and had taken one of two pills given to him by a friend, according to the probable-cause statement from State Patrol Trooper Chris Moon.

A 30-milligram Oxycodone pill was found in the vehicle McKenzie was driving, Moon said in the probable-cause statement.

A portable breath test found no alcohol in McKenzie’s system.

McKenzie was “cooperative, nodding off and falling asleep,” troopers said