Driver not faulted in crash that killed bicyclist, but gets 19 months for leaving scene

A 36-year-old man was sentenced Tuesday, April 14, to 19 months in prison for leaving the scene of a fatal collision with a bicyclist who was crossing Highway 99 in Eugene despite a claim heard in court that the cyclist a day earlier had told a friend he “wanted to die.”

Kacy Daniel Foster, from Eugene, pleaded guilty to failure to perform duties of a driver to injured persons.

The death of 63-year-old Merle Sheffield put a spotlight on safety concerns about pedestrians and drivers along a commercial stretch of the highway where some social service providers are located — a St. Vincent de Paul day shelter for the unhoused, for instance.

“There’s no evidence to suggest, like in a usual hit-and-run, you’re somehow at fault,” Lane County Circuit Judge Charles Zennaché told Foster before handing down the sentence.

But Foster still had “an obligation” to stop, he said.

“The reality is, people are tired in society of people shirking their responsibilities, tired of people running away,” Zennaché said.

The hearing included a written statement from Sheffield’s niece read aloud by prosecutor David Jampolsky, as well as details of the collision and an audio recording of a man describing himself as a friend of Sheffield’s.

“I consider him like a brother of mine,” said the voice of a man — identified by defense attorney Clayton Tullos as John Ring — on the recording.

Ring said he spoke with Sheffield the night before the Jan. 3 fatal collision.

“The last thing he stated to me is, he wanted to die,” Ring said. Sheffield told him “he was done with life,” with “no purpose” for living, Ring said in the recording.

Staci Clegg, Sheffield’s niece, in an interview after the court hearing said she spoke with her uncle just a couple of days before the collision and that there were “no indications at all that he was suicidal.”

In her written statement, Clegg said, “My uncle was more than just a name on a report or a statistic on a graph. He was family.”

“Lives on both sides of this tragedy have been permanently changed,” Clegg wrote, stating that “accountability matters” but also expressing forgiveness for Foster.

Before his sentencing, Foster told Zennaché he was “deeply sorry for the loss and the impact on everyone’s lives.”

“I was raised better than to be like this or take off from the scene. That’s not who I am, and I feel horrible for it. I want to be here for my daughter. I want to teach her the right ways. It’s not who I am,” Foster said.

After the hearing, several of Foster’s family and friends expressed disappointment at the sentence.

Susan Lovan, who said she is a friend of Foster’s, said pedestrians who don’t use crosswalks frequently pose hazards for drivers on Highway 99.

“No one feels safe. Nobody feels safe driving down this road anymore. It just seems like everything that’s bad in Eugene has been taken to that road,” Lovan said, going on to describe other problems she’s seen such as open drug use and littering.

Eugene police have announced “focused enforcement” along the Highway 99 corridor in response to complaints from residents and businesses, including providing drug offenders treatment opportunities through “deflection” programs, police have said.

Foster’s mother, Shirley Reeves, said her son was “a victim here.” She said she wished the judge took into account the behavior of pedestrians along Highway 99.

“Those people walk right out in front of you all day long. They’re in the road.” Reeves said. 

“It’s going to happen again,” she added.

Accountability

During the sentencing hearing, Jampolsky said video showed Sheffield riding onto the roadway “not giving enough time” for Foster to react before the 5:33 p.m. collision.

But Jampolsky said video also showed “people’s reactions,” such as calling for help, when “Mr. Foster is nowhere to be found.”

“The nature of this crime is accountability,” Jampolsky said. Whether staying at the scene would have helped Sheffield “is not really material, but the human decency to remain on scene is,” Jampolsky said.

Foster has a pending DUII case in Springfield Municipal Court, as well as a pending case for driving while having a suspended license, Jampolsky said.

“That suspension was currently in place when this accident happened as well,” he noted.

Foster in 2013 was convicted of DUII.

Referencing how he weighed the details of the crash against Foster’s criminal history, Jampolsky told Zennaché the case “falls back in the middle,” and he recommended a 20-month sentence for Foster. Such a sentence, he said, would be in line with state sentencing guidelines for the Class B felony, which take into account a person’s past convictions.

Tullos, the defense attorney, in addition to playing the audio from Ring, questioned the purpose of “compounding the tragedy” given that Foster was not at fault for the collision.

In a 41-page sentencing memorandum that also included letters of support from friends and and family, Tullos recommended a reduced sentence from state guidelines or probation.

In the court document, Tullos wrote that surveillance camera footage from Foster’s employer, showed him “working and not consuming alcohol nor any other unlawful substance” before leaving work and then colliding with Sheffield. Tullos said Foster worked as a mechanic.

After the collision, Eugene police publicly released images of a vehicle involved, seeking the driver. Tullos said he accompanied Fowler to the police station Jan. 6, three days after the crash, so Fowler could turn himself in.

Zennaché also sentenced Foster to 36 months of post-prison supervision following his release. The sentence also includes a five-year revocation of Foster’s driver’s license.

Clegg, in an interview after the hearing, said she works at a service station near where the collision took place. 

She said she believes her uncle was “on his way to the service station to go have dinner” when he was struck by the vehicle driven by Foster.

She recalled telling her uncle that “I would see him on Sunday when I came in to work,” but instead received a phone call from a co-worker on her day off telling her about the collision.

“My heart goes out to him,” Clegg said of Foster. “It goes out to his family, his daughter. I just feel for him and his family. Nobody should have to go through this.”

But of the sentence, Clegg said, “I think it was fair.”