PORT ANGELES — The 24-year-old Port Angeles woman charged with vehicular homicide in connection with a March 6 highway wreck that killed a nurse has posted bail for a second time and is again released from jail.
Jail Superintendent Ron Sukert said Amber Dale Steim was responsible for paying 10 percent, or $10,000, of the total bail amount. The bond agency, which is listed a A Plus Bail Bonds of Vancouver, Wash., is responsible for the rest, Sukert said.
She was released from Clallam County jail today.
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EARLIER REPORT:
PORT ANGELES — A woman charged with vehicular homicide and drunken driving who was out on bail was abruptly returned to jail Tuesday after a courtroom accusation that she tried to influence a witness.
Amber Dale Steim, 24, of Port Angeles — charged in the March 6 death of an Olympic Medical Center home health nurse — had posted $50,000 bail last week and been released from jail after pleading not guilty March 9.
Superior Court Judge S. Brooke Taylor, who lowered Steim’s original $100,000 bail at the March 9 arraignment, raised the bail back to $100,000 Tuesday after Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Troberg alleged that Steim tampered with a witness — the passenger in her pickup truck that collided with the other pickup truck on state Highway 112.
About 50 people attending the hearing sat quietly in the courtroom as Taylor made his ruling.
Steim sobbed as she was placed in handcuffs and rejailed.
The new bail amount includes the $50,000 that Steim has already posted, meaning she needs to come up with another $50,000 bail bond to be freed again.
She remained in custody as of 11 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Clallam County jail roster.
Other conditions of release were imposed Tuesday.
If Steim makes bail again, she will have to wear an alcohol detection bracelet, abide by a 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and have no contact with the passenger in her truck, Nicole Boucher.
Steim has not been allowed to drive since her arrest March 6.
Troberg alleged that Steim phoned Boucher and her mother from jail March 7 and told them that she drank alcohol after the wreck because she was in pain.
“The legal significance, of course, is that would completely throw off the validity of the blood-alcohol test, which was taken after the fact,” Troberg said.
Court documents showed that Steim’s blood-alcohol level was 0.239 percent after the wreck that killed Ellen J. DeBondt on Highway 112 between Joyce and Port Angeles. The legal limit is 0.08 percent.
DeBondt, 44, of Crescent Beach was a home health nurse affiliated with Olympic Medical Center.
In Tuesday’s hearing, Troberg cited an earlier incident in which Steim blew 0.208 percent on a portable Breathalyzer.
She was arrested while pumping gas into her car at a Port Angeles convenience store in November.
A charge of physical control of a vehicle while intoxicated was lowered to negligent driving, and Steim was convicted Jan. 25.
“Ms. Steim is really not in control of herself or her ability to drink,” Troberg told the judge Tuesday.
“Frankly, that’s the state’s concern.”
A car Steim was driving struck and killed a pedestrian — Irene Harris, 44 — while driving at night in Port Angeles in 2007 but Steim was never charged with a crime.
Police at the time said Harris was wearing dark clothing and walked into the crosswalk without looking up. They also said alcohol was not involved.
Troberg said he would add a witness tampering charge to Steim’s vehicular homicide case later this week. A one-week trial is set to begin April 25.
“Because of the tampering and because of the threats to the integrity of the state’s case, I would ask the court to increase the bail,” Troberg said.
In response, defense attorney Ralph Anderson said Steim had followed all of the conditions of her release that the judge set last week.
The condition Taylor set then was that she could not drive.
“Nothing has changed since your honor has made the ruling,” Anderson said.
“My client has been scrupulous.”
Anderson cited a phone conversation from March 9 in which Steim told Boucher that she could no longer speak with her under his advice.
“If the court is going to set bail on tampering, it can do so, but it’s not appropriate to do it now,” Anderson said.
“We believe we have a very solid defense to that.”
Anderson said there are “a lot of people with hard feelings” about the case. He said “outrageous” comments have been made about Steim on online blogs.
“It’s just cheap junk, and it shouldn’t be paid attention to,” Anderson said.
The Peninsula Daily News doesn’t permit comments on stories about the case because of alleged libel and abuse involving an ongoing court case.
“This is not a popularity contest,” Taylor said.
“It is a court of justice, as Mr. Anderson points out. I care not what’s going on in the blogosphere as well.
“I do care what Ms. Steim is doing and has been doing since her arrest,” the judge said.
“I will tell you that had I known that this [alleged witness tampering] was going on downstairs [in the jail] at the time I reduced bail, I would not have even considered reducing the bail.”
Port Angeles defense attorney William Payne, a former Clallam County deputy prosecutor, was added to Steim’s legal team Tuesday.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
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