Driver pleads guilty in fatal, wrong-way 520 crash
Jun 21, 2013, 10:46 AM | Updated: 11:21 am
The victim was rounding a corner and had no chance to avoid the crash. Rescuers pulled her from her mangled car but she died that morning at Harborview Medical Center. (KIRO Radio Photo/Tim Haeck/File)
(KIRO Radio Photo/Tim Haeck/File)
The man arrested for a wrong-way, drunk driving crash on State Route 520 in Seattle that killed a woman pleaded guilty Friday morning.
The crash happened during the morning rush on April 4. Morgan Williams, 58, was driving to work eastbound on 520 approaching the floating bridge. She didn’t know that Michael Robertson, 25, had done a U-turn ahead of her and was speeding in her direction, driving westbound in the eastbound lanes. He plowed into Williams’ car beneath Montlake Boulevard with what investigators termed a “closing speed of approximately 100 mph.”
Williams was rounding a corner and had no chance to avoid the crash. Rescuers pulled her from her mangled car but she died that morning at Harborview Medical Center.
Robertson sat in a wheelchair in King County Superior Court with casts on both legs as he changed his plea to guilty to vehicular homicide and pleaded guilty to a drunk driving charge out of Tacoma, as well. He had a trial pending in that case in Tacoma Municipal Court at the time of the wrong-way crash.
The Tacoma man faces up to 10-1/2 years in prison when he’s sentenced on July 26.
