PORT ANGELES — Mary Kristine Kniskern pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing three young adults and injuring two others in an alcohol-related car crash on New Year’s Eve 2002.
Wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and with her long, dark hair partially obscuring her face, a tearful Kniskern, 27, answered “guilty” to each of five felony charges read in Clallam County Superior Court by Judge Pro-Tempore William Knebes.
“I know that it doesn’t mean anything for me to say that I’m sorry,” Kniskern later said in court, sobbing, before Knebes imposed a 12-year prison sentence.
“If any good is going to come of this, then it should be for everyone to not do what I did,” she said.
Kniskern’s plea, part of an agreement reached between her attorney, Terry Mulligan of Clallam-Jefferson Public Defenders, and Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly, was to three counts of vehicular homicide and two counts of vehicular assault for the Dec. 31, 2002, crash on Palo Alto Road near Sequim when Kniskern’s car plunged off the road.
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The rest of the story appears in Thursday’s Peninsula Daily News Clallam County edition.