INSIDE: Digitized drama ... Island Life, A11
Record South Whidbey
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2012 | Vol. 88, No. 104 | www.SOUTHWHIDBEYRECORD.com | 75¢
Highway crashes injure six, send three to Harborview BY BEN WATANABE Staff reporter Driving on Highway 525 has been hazardous this holiday season. Six people, including two minors, survived a head-on and a T-bone car crash this past week, both at high speeds. The T-bone collision Wednesday night sent Langley resident Heather Kelley, 37, to Harborview Medical Center. As of Dec. 28, Kelley was in serious condition in the intensive care unit at Harborview. “We get a lot of accidents in that general road,” said South Whidbey Fire/EMS Deputy Chief Jon Beck, who was the officer in command at the scene. “There’s a lot of businesses, a lot of side roads. That’s one of the primary reasons the state dropped the speed limit to 45 mph.” Driving south on Highway 525, Kelley’s minivan collided with a Chevrolet truck driven by Clinton resident Oran Downs, 83, as he pulled out of the American Legion Post 141 driveway near Bayview. Responders from South Whidbey Fire/EMS had to cut the frame of Kelley’s Chrysler Town and Country van, remove the driver’s door and part of the driver-side rear door to extract her from the wreck. She was conscious during the extraction, which lasted about 15 minutes. “The majority of the newer cars are so strong that the driver’s compartment is protected,” Beck said. “We’re just seeing the result of newer technology.” Upon removal from the wreckage, Kelley was stabilized on a stretcher and taken to Whidbey General Hospital and ultimately driven to Harborview. The low cloud ceiling
“The dashboard, the front end and everything just compressed.” Deputy Chief Mike Cotton South Whidbey Fire/EMS
Photo courtesy of South Whidbey Fire/EMS
Stuck in her seat with the frame crushed around her, South Whidbey Fire/EMS first responders extract Heather Kelley from her wrecked minivan. Kelley collided with a truck as it pulled onto Highway 525 from the American Legion hall in Bayview. Wednesday night prohibited an airlift transport. Downs, a Clinton resident, and his passenger, 61-year-old Marc Woodside of Greenbank, were not injured in the crash. Both refused any medical treatment by Whidbey General Hospital and South Whidbey Fire/EMS emergency medical technicians. That stretch of the highway accelerates from 45 mph to 55 mph just south of the drive-
way to the American Legion hall. It used to be 55 mph through Bayview. “Lowering the speed limit has helped in that area,” Beck said. The site of the collision was blocked off for four hours Wednesday night as Washington State Patrol investigated the area. That was the second time in less than five days that South Whidbey Fire/EMS had to cut a driver out of their car.
Will he stay or will he go? Mayor mulls his future with Langley BY JIM LARSEN Record editor Langley residents will begin the new year in suspense as they wait to find out if they still have a mayor. The jail-bound Larry Kwarsick, who one year ago was proudly being sworn in to his first term as mayor, has less than 20 days to respond to a lawsuit filed by Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks aimed at kicking Kwarsick out of office. Kwarsick pleaded guilty Dec. 17 in Island County Superior Court to a gross misdemeanor of “falsifying a city record.” The plea agreement
Ben Watanabe / The Record
Langley Mayor Larry Kwarsick talks about his legal trouble during an interview at the South Whidbey Record office. He’s destined to serve 15 days in jail but is undecided if he will resign as mayor as demanded by the Island County prosecutor. called only for a monetary fine and for his resignation from office, but Judge Vickie Churchill, angered
that Kwarsick would “betray the public confidence,” gave him 15 days in jail, beginning Feb. 4.
The head-on crash in Freeland on Dec. 22 led to two people being airlifted to Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center from Whidbey General Hospital, and three others were treated at Whidbey General Hospital. Both crashes are believed to have drugs or alcohol involved, according to the Washington State Patrol reports. There were no fatalities from the unrelated wrecks. The Freeland collision trapped one driver in his Toyota Corolla for about 30 minutes. South Whidbey Fire/EMS responders cut out the door to extract Brian Shore, a 36-year-old Seattle man. “The dashboard, the front end and everything just compressed,” said Mike Cotton, deputy chief of South Whidbey Fire/EMS. Shore was conscious during the extraction, Cotton said, but in pain. After Shore was removed from the totaled sedan, he was placed on a stretcher and taken to Whidbey General Hospital, and later airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. “We took full precautions with him because of the mechanism of high-speed crashes,” Cotton said.
There has been some confusion over the basis for Banks’ lawsuit, he admitted in an email to the Record last week. “The bottom line here is that I didn’t bring the lawsuit to enforce the terms of the plea bargain,” the prosecutor wrote. “That agreement has been fully satisfied. I brought the lawsuit because the law requires him to step down. Upon my review of the statutes, it appears that I’m the public official who is expected to do something about it.” The lawsuit cites a state law that a person convicted of “malfeasance” in office must be “forever barred from holding public office.” When he enters the jail cell, Kwarsick will either be another former Langley mayor or fighting a legal battle to keep his job. Even Kwarsick isn’t sure what he will decide. “To me it’s a complex feeling,” he said. “I’ve helped Langley get off in the right direction.”
See Crashes, A10
At times Kwarsick sounded like a man dictating his own obituary, citing highlights of his tenure. He and his staff recently made a list of all their accomplishments during his first year, and another list of goals for next year. At others times, Kwarsick appears feisty; that there’s more to his story than has been told, and more to the law than what prosecutor Banks cited in his lawsuit filed Dec. 21, shortly after Kwarsick announced he intended to remain as Langley’s mayor. “You have to look at the whole body of law, and the weight of the law may be on my side,” Kwarsick responded. He said another mayor of a small town in this state kept his job after being found guilty of impersonating a police officer. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, but I’ve just had nine months of uncertainty,” he said. That’s how long See Kwarsick, A6