It is a traffic case that has the city of Anchorage talking. It's a case of road rage colliding with a case of callous indifference. It ended with one Anchorage woman dead and the man who tried to cover it all up about to be sentenced for leaving the scene of an accident. The case was featured in a commentary last Friday in the Anchorage Daily News and has provided a lot of fodder for talk radio. It involves the chance encounter on O'Malley Road between a woman whom the evidence suggests was driving in anger and a young man determined to teach her a lesson.
On June 27, 2004, the Anchorage Police Department arrived at an accident site, but there was nobody in the Toyota Land Cruiser. The car had rolled over several times, and the two people inside were thrown from the vehicle. The driver died at the scene, but the young passenger was rushed to the hospital and survived. Neither had been wearing seatbelts.
The driver was 47-year-old Gail Fejes. She was driving her 10-year-old son Hunter to hockey practice. There were no witnesses, and police attributed the crash to Fejes' driving.
"Slow down, please, and wear seatbelts, that's two things involved here that, you know, less speed, more seatbelts," said Sgt. Glenn Daily, on June 27, 2004.
But it turns out there was one witness that Sunday morning and he was driving a silver pickup truck. He saw Fejes' Land Cruiser flip two or three times, right in front of him, watching everything that was in the Land Cruiser fly out the sunroof.
And with Gail Fejes dying on the ground and her son severely injured nearby, he turned left on Elmore Road and drove away. In fact, he not only saw it happen, one might look at the evidence and say he caused it.
That driver was 23-year-old Mark Elkins. He was arrested more than a year after the accident after a CrimeStoppers tip. And young Hunter Fejes had said all along that a silver pickup had cut them off.
According to police and Elkins himself, here are the events of that Sunday morning: Fejes and her son were coming down off the Hillside on O'Malley. They'd just passed the Alaska Zoo when Elkins turned onto the road right in front of them. Elkins says Fejes tailgated him for the next several hundred yards, honking her horn and making obscene gestures. And after putting up with it for about 10 seconds, Elkins told a private investigator "I had enough of that. I just stomped on the brakes and pulled over to the right side of the road and that's where she lost control."
The district attorney's office charged Elkins with manslaughter, first-degree assault and leaving the scene of an accident without rendering aide. But then a bombshell was dropped. At a hearing 11 days ago, the state accepted a plea bargain and the manslaughter and assault charges would be dropped if Elkins pleaded guilty for leaving the scene of the accident -- a crime that carries a sentence of up to 10 years for the worst cases.
The state, however, proposed a sentence of 24 months, with 21 months suspended. Elkins would serve 12 weeks in jail and lose his driver's license for a year.
That did not sit well with the family of Gail Fejes. They asked Judge Michael Wolverton to reject it.
"I hope he looks at it real seriously and he meets out a sentence that will carry some weight and carry a message to people who are out there driving crazy," said Leslie Schmitz, sister of Gail Fejes.
"The prosecutor could have sent his worst prosecutor in to trial on that case and gotten a conviction, it's an easy case. There was no reason to make a deal on it," said Paul Stockler, former state prosecutor.
Stocker is a former prosecutor now in private practice. He says without witnesses, the state could have had a tough time proving manslaughter and maybe even assault. But he says a conviction on leaving the scene was a slam dunk and a three-month sentence is a slap on the wrist, considering one more factor.
FOR SUBSCRIBERSCBP leaders cut out of Trump ad buy decision
FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane
FOR SUBSCRIBERSCBP leaders cut out of Trump ad buy decision
FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane
"We always consider people's past. Mr. Elkins driving record is certainly up there in the top 10 percent of the worst you will see," said Stocker.
Elkins received his first speeding ticket a month after turning 16. He got his second fewer than four months later. From there, he received a citation or more every year, meaning five more speeding tickets. His license was suspended twice, which hardly slowed him down, and he was cited three times for driving without a license. Among the other citations, he got one in July 2000 for leaving the scene of an accident. He was on probation for that conviction the day he left the scene on O'Malley Road. And he has been cited twice since the accident for running a red light and driving without insurance.
Tomorrow, the state and Elkins' public defender will try to convince Wolverton to accept the deal. However, this time, there will likely be plenty of witnesses.
"With a crowded courtroom, one death and a boy who almost died, with 15 prior and subsequent traffic convictions, Judge Wolverton will be hard pressed to agree that he only gets three months in jail. This young man could have easily gotten multiple years in jail, and it's hard to justify less than that," said Stocker.
The family of Gail Fejes in their complaint on the plea deal is asking that Elkins be sentenced to at least one year in jail. They believe that the intentional act of brake checking is a reckless act and sufficient to get a conviction on manslaughter or assault. But more than anything they simply want Elkins to spend at least a year in jail for leaving Hunter on the side of the road.
The family's attorneys, which include former prosecutor Bill Ingaldsen, say a 90-day sentence would only be appropriate if Elkins left the scene of a less serious accident, but certainly not an accident where someone was killed.
There's also some leeway given for an offender who shows they're a good candidate for rehabilitation. Considering Elkins had 17 driving infractions in seven years, including driving without a license or insurance, that certainly argues against him being a good candidate for rehabilitation.
The district attorney's office is not talking about why they are cutting a deal. KTUU-TV was told that district attorney Bob Linton himself will be arguing for the deal tomorrow afternoon in Wolverton's courtroom.
Elkins' public defender, Glenda Kerry, also deferred comment until after the hearing, but late Friday afternoon she did respond to the Fejes family's complaint. The defense says the physical evidence backs up Elkins' version of the story, and they also present the accounts of two witnesses who say they saw Gail Fejes (shown in photograph at lower right corner) driving or acting aggressively on two other occasions. One woman told the defense that she witnessed Fejes spit on a woman after another case of road rage. There are no dates provided for when this reportedly happened, but it sets up an interesting paradox.
The defense says that Elkins deserves leniency based upon Gail Fejes' past driving behavior without mentioning the extremely long history of driving violations by Elkins, including the fact this is the second time he's left the scene of an accident.
In the end there are so many things that could have prevented this from happening. For one, seatbelts could have quite possibly saved Gail Fejes' life and prevented Hunter from serious injury. And Fejes would still be alive if she could have contained her road rage or if Elkins would have fought the urge to slam on his brakes and teach her a lesson.