Mourning Families Want Stiffer Penalties For Drivers Who Drink, Kill -- Grieving Aunt: `They Call This An Accident'

AUBURN - Beside the road, a strand of rosary beads hangs from a wooden cross wreathed by flowers. It marks the spot where a driver with a history of drinking allegedly knocked an Auburn youth from his bicycle.

The cross symbolizes love and strength - strength the victims' families will need to lobby the Legislature to follow the lead of other states and crack down on drunken drivers who kill.

The youth, 14-year-old Rolando Rosario, was thrown more than 50 feet and died in the Aug. 17 crash; the brother and cousin who were with him were injured.

It was the second crash in Auburn in less than a week in which alcohol may have played a role in taking the life of a teenager. Five days earlier, Billy Finnegan, 18, was driving through a downtown intersection with his girlfriend and her sister when an allegedly drunken driver struck his car, flipping it over and injuring all three. Finnegan died nearly a month later.

"We're talking about murderers, and they call this an accident," said Clarita Lee, Rolando Rosario's aunt. "Whatever it takes, I'm going to change that. Whatever it takes."

Charges are being reviewed in both cases this week. But if both suspects are charged with vehicular homicide, they would face a standard sentence of 21 to 27 months, with one-third off for good behavior. That makes Washington among the most lenient states in the country in such cases, according to the Northwestern University Traffic Institute.

The average sentence nationwide is between five and 10 years.

"The trend is moving to treat this more like murder," said Northwestern's Dan Gilbert, who recently held a national seminar on vehicular homicide. "Picking up the car keys when you're drunk is like picking up a revolver."

Gilbert said most murders occur between people who know one another; violence is often anticipated.

But most vehicular-homicide victims are people like the two Auburn youths who simply happened to be on the road at the wrong time.

A HALF-MILE FROM HOME

For Rolando, his brother Rhandy, now 13, and their cousin, Jason Anton, now 14, it was the road home from Auburn's Game Farm Park the evening of Aug. 17. Pedaling uphill, they were within a half-mile of home.

At the same time, Juanita Robertson of Auburn was heading home. A vehicle whizzed by her. Moments later, she noticed two hats in the road and a bicycle off to the side.

Just as she pulled over, Jason crawled up from a culvert, begging for help. Robertson and another motorist comforted the boy, who'd hurt his arm. They wrapped a sweater and jacket around Rhandy, who lay in the bushes, his hips and left leg broken.

There was nothing they could do for Rolando.

An upbeat boy who played on Olympic Junior High's football, basketball, wrestling and track teams, "Rollo," as his friends called him, was hurled more than 50 feet into some bushes.

Rhandy, now in a wheelchair with a cast on his left leg and pins in his hips, remembers nothing about that evening. "For days, I didn't even realize he was gone, not for days," said Rhandy.

Prosecutors accused Christopher Torkelson, 22, of Auburn of ramming his van into the boys and driving off. After a three-week hunt, Torkelson was arrested in Ellensburg and has pleaded not guilty to felony hit and run, which carries a sentence of three to nine months.

Auburn police are searching for evidence that would upgrade the charge to vehicular homicide. To do that, they'll have to show he was driving recklessly or was drunk.

Witnesses have already told police Torkelson slurred his speech when they saw him a short time after the crash. And the van he allegedly drove contained empty wine-cooler and beer bottles, including one half-full, police said.

Torkelson knew about the dangers of drinking and driving.

Five years ago in Lewis County, he admitted driving a car that overturned, killing his 24-year-old friend. Despite his confession and a blood-alcohol reading of .17, charges were never filed because no one else could identify him as the driver, the county prosecutor's office said.

This past February, he was arrested and charged with driving drunk in Thurston County. Again, no punishment. Instead, the court granted him a deferred prosecution, meaning that if he followed an alcohol-treatment program for two years, his record would be wiped clean.

Torkelson left court with his driver's license intact.

1 DEAD, 2 INJURED

The wooden cross is just around the bend from the home of Jennifer Sparhawk, 17, who can barely bring herself to talk about the death of her first real boyfriend - Billy Finnegan. It's still too painful.

The evening of Aug. 12, five days before the hit-and-run accident, Billy, Jennifer and her sister Melissa, 12, stopped at a red light on their way home from a birthday party.

Billy screamed as a Ford Mustang, its lights off, sped through the light and struck his car.

Jennifer's collarbone snapped; Melissa suffered internal injuries.

The Mustang's driver fled.

Both girls are recovering, but Billy, after being on life support nearly a month, died two weeks ago.

The Mustang's alleged driver, William Wayne, 28, of Auburn, has twice been convicted of drunken driving. He has been convicted eight times of driving with a revoked license and was driving without a license on the night he allegedly slammed into Finnegan's car.

Prosecutor's spokesman Dan Donohoe said charges against him will be upgraded from vehicular assault to vehicular homicide as a result of Billy's death. Wayne's blood alcohol was .27, court documents said - nearly three times the legal limit of intoxication.

According to Northwestern's Traffic Institute, the average drunken driver who kills tests .20 on a Breathalyzer, equivalent to a 150-pound man consuming eight to 10 drinks in one hour.

Last year, an estimated 17,699 people died in the United States in alcohol-related traffic crashes, and 1.2 million were injured.

But Washington doesn't consider drunken driving that kills someone

murder, and the penalties are far lighter. While sentences have increased substantially since the late 1970s, the standard range for vehicular homicide is 21 to 27 months, compared to second-degree murder with a range of 123 to 164 months.

Donohoe said the difference comes down to intent. Under Washington law, a person must act deliberately to call it murder. The law presumes that drunken drivers don't set out to kill, he said.

The national office of Mothers Against Drunk Driving said many states are charging second- and third-degree murder in drunken-driving deaths under the theory that being drunk and operating a motor vehicle constitutes implied intent or extreme indifference to human life.

Earlier this year in Denver, a man received nine life terms, the longest sentence for a drunken fatality. The man, who had six previous convictions for drinking and driving, killed three children in August 1992.

Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and New Jersey have upheld murder convictions for drunken drivers.

Billy's mother, Diane Finnegan, believes Washington legislators need to recognize that drunks should not be immune from punishment because they didn't mean to hurt anyone. "Who doesn't know that when you get into a vehicle drunk, you might kill someone?" she asked.

Finnegan, along with the Sparhawk family, Lee and Benita Rosario - Rhandy and Roland's mother - expect to begin formulating a plan to take to the Legislature.

Said Michele Sparhawk, mother of Jennifer and Melissa: "We have to find an answer."