Jeff and Sarrah Held and their two young children were traveling southbound on Northeast 29th Avenue near Battle Ground on their way to do some Black Friday shopping in November 2012 when Jeff gripped the steering wheel and blurted out an expletive.
“That’s not his everyday language,” Sarrah Held testified Monday in Clark County Superior Court. “I was wondering what he was upset about. The next thing I know a car had passed us.”
The car — a 1994 green Toyota Corolla station wagon — driven by 20-year-old Ryan Matison of Battle Ground passed in the opposite lane of traffic on the two-lane road.
After zooming by the family’s vehicle, the Toyota straddled the centerline between the north- and southbound lanes just before it crested a hill near the intersection of State Route 502, also known as Northeast 219th Street, and disappeared from view. The couple had a sense of foreboding because they knew there was a stop sign over that hill, Sarrah Held said.
“We were concerned as to the way the car was driving because it went so fast,” she said.
When the Held family reached the intersection, they saw the Toyota in a field on the southeast corner of the intersection, she said. A silver 2006 Chevrolet pickup truck had collided with the Toyota at the intersection when the Toyota failed to stop at a stop sign, according to court records.
Sarrah Held said she saw the drivers emerge from both vehicles, and she saw a figure with blonde hair still on the passenger side of the Toyota, where the Chevrolet had made impact.
The blonde hair belonged to Matison’s girlfriend, Samantha Effingham, 17, of Woodland, who was killed about 2:30 p.m. Nov. 23, 2012, when the truck struck the Toyota’s passenger side, according to court records.
Prosecutors say Matison was driving 63 to 64 mph in a 40-mph zone at the time of the impact with the Chevrolet and charged him criminally for Effingham’s death.
In an opening statement in Matison’s trial Monday, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Kasey Vu asked a Clark County jury to find him guilty of vehicular homicide and reckless driving.
“This was not an accident,” Vu said.
Matison’s defense attorney, Chris Sundstrom, said that, in fact, the collision was an accident. Sundstrom said a defense expert would testify during the weeklong trial that Matison was traveling 45 to 53 mph and that his brakes gave out when he reached the intersection of Northeast 29th Avenue and State Route 502.
“It will be my job to point out doubts about evidence (presented by prosecutors),” Sundstrom said.
Vu launched his case with testimony from Clark County Medical Examiner Dennis Wickham and then Sarrah Held.
Wickham, who performed an autopsy on Effingham, said that she died from multiple blunt force trauma. He described multiple bone fractures in her skull, ribs, legs, pelvis and vertebra and lacerations to multiple parts of her body, including her aorta, the body’s largest artery.
Matison, now 22, buried his head in his arms during Wickham’s testimony and then turned his chair away from a projection screen where photographs of Effingham’s autopsy were displayed.
He has been free on bond since shortly after his arrest in February 2013.
His trial is scheduled to continue at 9 a.m. today in the Judge Suzan Clark’s courtroom.
