By NOEL S. BRADY
BELLEVUE — A 21-year-old Sequim man has pleaded guilty for getting drunk and causing a grisly traffic collision here that killed 20-year-old Robert Vasen and injured at least four other young men.
In a Seattle courtroom Wednesday, Jarrod Wayne Bandy repeated “guilty” as a judge read each of his three original charges — vehicular homicide and two counts of vehicular assault for two men who survived serious injuries in the March 25 crash.
Sentencing is scheduled for May 26.
Senior Deputy Prosecutor Amy Freedheim said she will recommend a judge sentence Bandy to 5½ years in prison, the top of the standard range. Freedheim said she based her recommendation on Bandy’s flagrant recklessness and the seriousness of the crash.
“There was some pretty bad driving that [Bandy] had been doing all night until this accident,” Freedheim said outside the courtroom.
“And several kids were hurt.”
‘Acting weird’
At least two of the five passengers in Bandy’s 1993 Jeep Cherokee told police Bandy had been “acting weird” and driving recklessly the night of the crash, court documents say.
At one point, Bandy turned up the volume on his car stereo and started dancing in his seat as he drove, witnesses said.
It was about 11:30 p.m., and Bandy was driving about 50 mph up a hill on Northeast Second Street in Bellevue, when a traffic light at the approaching intersection of 108th Avenue Northeast turned yellow. He accelerated to beat the light.
According to witnesses, the light was red when Bandy entered the intersection and slammed into the rear driver’s side door of a BMW, driven by 22-year-old Ryan Kellogg.
There were four passengers in the BMW, including Vasen in the back seat.