Camas woman pleads guilty in hit and run

A Camas woman admitted Thursday to failing to stop after her vehicle struck a man using a walker to cross Vancouver’s Mill Plain Boulevard in October. Stephen D. Dewey, 65, of Vancouver died about a week later from injuries caused by the crash.

In an agreement with prosecutors, Jessica B. VanWechel, 31, pleaded guilty in Clark County Superior Court to hit-and-run death. In exchange, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Kasey Vu dropped a charge of vehicular homicide.

She is scheduled to be sentenced July 2. Vu and VanWechel’s attorney, Louis Byrd Jr., have agreed to jointly recommend a sentence of nearly five years in prison. The judge, however, has the latitude to sentence her to between 41 and 61 months.

VanWechel was sending text messages when her powder blue Toyota Paseo struck Dewey while he was in a crosswalk, then sped away, according to court documents. The hit and run occurred at about 7 p.m. Oct. 28 at the intersection of Mill Plain and Southeast 105th Avenue. The traffic signal for east-west traffic on Mill Plain had turned green while Dewey was still in the crosswalk.

Dewey was transported to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center, where he died about a week later from blunt trauma to the head.

VanWechel was apprehended about four months after the collision, when detectives matched paint chips and headlight lens fragments found at the scene to the make, model and color of her vehicle. Vancouver police issued a bulletin in February asking local patrol officers to look out for a damaged powder blue Toyota. A Camas police officer spotted the vehicle and arrested VanWechel.

She admitted to a friend that she had looked down to send a text when her car struck Dewey and that she fled the scene because she didn’t have insurance, according to prosecutors.