King County Prosecutors on Thursday charged 26-year-old Redmond resident Kyle Dalan with vehicular homicide.
Dalan’s vehicle crossed the center line of State Route 202 at about 3 p.m. on Monday, May 26, and collided head-on with a motorcycle ridden by 74-year-old Mark Stolle of Sammamish, according to charging papers.
Stolle was thrown from the motorcycle and landed in a ditch. He sustained multiple “catastrophic” injuries to the head, torso and extremeties, and died within minutes, charging documents and the King County Medical Examiner’s officials said.
Dalan initially told Washington State Patrol troopers that he had not been drinking. However, after his blood alcohol level was measured at .09, he told them he had consumed two margaritas and five beers, ending in the early morning hours of Memorial Day, prosecutors wrote.
Before the accident, Dalan was driving a 1995 Geo Tracker west on 202 near Southeast 40th Street, just west of Fall City.
He told investigators that he was on his way toward Redmond with some furniture in the back of the car, when the furniture began to shift forward in to the driver’s area. Dalan told troopers that he reached behind him to push the furniture back and the next thing he knew, he was in the ditch.
He also told officers that he didn’t know he had crossed the center line or hit Stolle’s motorcycle until someone at the scene told him.
A man who was driving directly behind Dalan said that the Geo Tracker crossed the center line all at once in a constant motion, and that Stolle swerved to the far right of his own lane in an effort to avoid the collision.
The two vehicles collided at the fog line, and both ended up in the ditch, witnesses said. Several people who observed the accident, including one off-duty firefighter, stopped to help. They tried to administer first aid to Stolle, but he was badly injured and did not have a pulse.
Troopers investigating the accident conducted field sobriety tests, and noted that Dalan’s performance and appearance indicated he had been drinking and smoking marijuana. He denied using any drugs.
Dalan was previously sentenced for driving under the influence in 2006, and had just had an ignition interlock device (IID) removed from his car in January of this year. He is on a probationary license until January of 2012, court papers said.
“He is a danger to the community, and only the ‘lock out’ of his DOL-ordered IID kept him off our roads after drinking in the past year,” prosecutors wrote in charging papers.
Dalan is being held at the King County Jail in Seattle in lieu of $250,000 bail. His arraignment is set for June 12.
