King County prosecutors charged an 18-year-old man Friday with four counts of vehicular homicide, two counts of vehicular assault and reckless driving in relation to a crash near Renton that killed a woman and three children.
The suspect, Chase Daniel Jones, was booked in the King County Jail on Friday after he was treated for his injuries at Harborview Medical Center. A judge set his bail at $1 million.
Andrea Hudson, 38, was killed in the crash along with three children of close friends who were passengers in her car: Boyd Buster Brown, 12; Matilda Wilcoxson, 13; and Eloise Wilcoxson, 12. Two of Hudson’s children were severely injured and remain hospitalized in intensive care.
Witnesses reported Jones, driving an Audi A4, was weaving in and out of traffic while traveling at high speeds on Tuesday in the unincorporated community of Fairwood, a King County sheriff’s detective wrote in a report.
Shortly before 1 p.m., Jones allegedly ran a red light and T-boned Hudson’s minivan at the intersection of Southeast 192nd Street and 140th Avenue Southeast. The force of the collision pushed her car into two other vehicles, prosecutors wrote.
Crash data from Jones’ car showed he was going 112 mph at full throttle through the intersection, with no apparent attempt at braking, according to the charges. The posted speed limit on the road is 40 mph.
Prosecutors noted this was the third car Jones has totaled in the past year. In one of those cases, he was going more than 20 mph over the speed limit when he T-boned another car in an uncontrolled intersection. Afterward, he reportedly made a statement, saying something like “it was an open straight road, so I gave it some gas” and that he was going too fast to avoid the crash, the detective wrote.
Jones’ arraignment is set for April 4.