After 6 years, former Kennewick pastor jailed in fatal accident

WALLA WALLA — Six years after he ignored his vision problems and hit a teen bicyclist while driving home from work, a former Kennewick pastor is behind bars for his vehicular-homicide conviction.

Randall Foos, 61, was booked into the state penitentiary here late Tuesday.

He was driven to the Walla Walla prison after arriving in Pasco on an Allegiant Air flight from Las Vegas. He was accompanied by law-enforcement officers.

Foos was sentenced in November 2006 to one year and three months in prison for killing Sara Casey, but since then he's been out on a court-granted stay and an appeals bond. He'd been living in Las Vegas and had not served a full day in custody for the crime until now.

"We knew last week that he was going to be brought back yesterday, or at least that that was the plan," Lori Casey, Sara's mother, told the Herald on Wednesday.

Grateful to police

"Obviously, we're relieved that he's finally being held accountable. But I guess at this point we're just grateful to the Kennewick Police Department because we understand that it was their initiative that they went down to retrieve him and bring him back here to serve his time. And so we appreciate that they did that."

Foos was the pastor of the Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Kennewick when on Sept. 17, 2003, his Jeep Grand Cherokee struck Sara's bicycle from behind.

Foos was heading home from the church when the crash occurred on Clearwater Avenue. He was traveling at about 40 mph.

Sara, 19, and a friend had been riding side by side. Motorists testified at the trial that Foos didn't swerve until after he hit Sara, when he braked.

Sara was a college student and 2002 graduate of Southridge High School.

She hit the front right bumper and the windshield of the Cherokee before being thrown into the air. Her helmet broke in the crash and she died six days later at a Spokane hospital.

Foos claimed his eyesight was fine on the day of the crash and that he was blinded by the sunlight, or that Sara's bicycle was near the middle of the lane. Foos had been diagnosed with three eye diseases while his eyesight fluctuated in the year before the wreck, according to trial testimony.

Foos lost his driving privileges with the September 2006 conviction. He appealed the conviction on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to support it and that Superior Court Judge Vic VanderSchoor erred when he denied Foos' request for a continuance on the first day of trial.

In January, the state Court of Appeals upheld the conviction. The court's opinion said that "Mr. Foos' disregard for the safety of others set in motion a chain of events that caused Ms. Casey's death. ... Sufficient evidence supports the vehicular homicide conviction."

The three-justice panel ruled that Foos ignored his impaired vision and doctors' orders not to drive.

His attorney then petitioned the Washington state Supreme Court to review the case. That request was denied earlier this fall and a mandate affirming the conviction was sent to Benton County Superior Court.

Deputy Prosecutor Terry Bloor said his office notified Foos and his attorneys that he had 30 days to turn himself. When that didn't happen, VanderSchoor signed an arrest warrant Oct. 22.

Extradition waived

Foos was arrested Oct. 30 in Clark County, Nevada. He waived his extradition and Tuesday boarded a plane in Las Vegas.

Bloor credited the Fugitive Task Force of the U.S. Marshals Office in Richland and the Kennewick Police Department "in locating (Foos) and actually funding his travel from Las Vegas to Benton County."

Foos reportedly was taken directly to the Washington State Penitentiary — instead of the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton for processing — because of health issues.

"I think everybody, particularly the family of the victim, Sara Casey, is glad to finally see that he has had some accountability," Bloor said. "It is very irritating, understandably so, to know that a person is convicted as the cause of the death of your daughter and to know that he is living free in Las Vegas."

Lori Casey said she isn't surprised the criminal case took this long to reach a resolution.

"Always in the back of my mind" was a case she'd read about soon after Sara's death, she said. In that case, which occurred in the early years of the campaign to crack down on DUIs, it took seven years for a woman to see her daughter's killer go to jail.

She and husband Terrance Casey support "all of the efforts of our police and State Patrol in holding severely impaired drivers accountable, whether that's from DUI, drugs or medical impairment."