"Mary Johnsen Law" driver arrested again

A woman who was once described by a judge as being a "human bomb" for her drunken driving was arrested again on a DUI charge nearly a decade after she killed a woman on the Sammamish Plateau.

Susan L. West, 48, was cited by a Bellevue police officer at 12:15 a.m. Sunday while driving a 1998 Buick in the 5600 block of 119th Avenue Southeast in the Newport Hills area.

The location was about two blocks from an apartment where West had lived for the past three years, since being released from prison after her 1997 vehicular-homicide conviction resulting from the death of Mary Johnsen, then 38, who was struck by a minivan driven by West in July of that year.

Johnsen's death helped lead to demands for tougher drunk drunken-driving laws, with the Legislature in 1998 adopting some 13 new DUI laws, including one lowering the intoxication level from 0.10 to its present 0.08. One bill that required ignition interlocks was named the Mary Johnsen Act.

At West's sentencing on the vehicular-homicide conviction in November 1997, King County Superior Court Judge Larry Jordan imposed an exceptional sentence, ordering West to serve nine years in prison for the death.

"You in essence became a human bomb," said Jordan, who cited a 20-year-history of drunken-driving violations and failed alcoholism treatments in sentencing West.

"Tragically, the previous orders from the court had no impact," the judge said then.

Jordan noted at the time that West had a blood-alcohol reading of 0.34 percent, adding that fewer than 200 blood-alcohol tests a year show readings above 0.30, out of more than 30,000 commonly conducted by the State Patrol each year.

"I found no case as high as your case," Jordan said.

The Sunday arrest by Bellevue police resulted from an officer noticing the car being erratically driven along 119th Avenue Southeast and then noting that it had a burned-out tail light, said a Bellevue police spokesman.

West was arrested then and booked into the King County jail at 1:03 a.m. Sunday. She is charged with one count of driving under the influence of alcohol and one count of driving with a suspended license. She refused to take a blood-alcohol test.

West has twice been scheduled to have court appearances to enter pleas to the charges, but both appearances were canceled because of medical reasons and court records indicated that she is in a detoxification center.

Bail was set at $75,000 on each count, with a judge concluding at a Monday hearing that West "is an extreme danger to the community."

She is next scheduled to appear in court Friday to enter a plea to the charges.