The two girls had plans to be roommates, to be each other's maids of honor. They were best friends with more phone calls and adventures ahead, but a reckless driver took that from them, and he replaced their hopes with anxieties and fears.
As Rachel Olson read her daughter's words to the court, family members of the girl's friend, Immaculee Goldade, dabbed tears from their eyes in the gallery. Through her mother, Kathleen Olson spoke not only of how she cherishes the memory of the last sleepover they spent together but also how the image of Immaculee being hit and killed by a truck sometimes plays through her nightmares.
"When I see big trucks or people walking on the side of the road, I can feel my heart pounding," Kathleen Olson's mother said on behalf of her daughter.
There was only standing room Friday afternoon in a Pierce County Superior courtroom where family and friends of the victims gathered to tell Judge Alicia Burton and defendant Terry Kohl how the deadly events of Jan. 15, 2022, affected them and to see the judge render Kohl's punishment.
After hearing from prosecutors and Kohl's defense attorneys from the Department of Assigned Counsel, Burton sentenced Kohl to 40 years, 4 months in prison for driving a stolen truck off a road near Parkland last year and slamming into 12-year-olds Olson and Goldade, who were on a walk near Midland Elementary School.
Kohl, 33, was found guilty in a jury trial last month of vehicular homicide, vehicular assault, failure to remain at an accident resulting in death, second-degree burglary, unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle, first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle and first-degree possessing stolen property.
Deputy prosecutor Elizabeth Dasse said the state had seen little remorse from Kohl for what he'd done, and she said he'd stop at nothing to save his own skin. She said he's a risk to community safety.
"Children should be able to walk home," Dasse said. "Children should be able to walk in their neighborhoods without worrying if somebody is going to hit them with a truck."
Family and friends of the victims spoke next, and as they talked, it was clear the hearing was not about Kohl or tearing into him for his recklessness. It became about everything they and Goldade will miss out on: memories left unmade, candles on a 14th birthday cake with no breath to blow them out, could-have-beens and aspirations left unfulfilled.
"Her big eyes, her radiant smile, we will always remember," Goldade's mother, Amber, said. "I often look out the window to see if I can see her walking in the yard talking on the phone. And she's not there."
It was also about the anxieties this kind of tragedy can bring on the victims and those around them. Goldade's father, John, spoke about how a phone call in the middle of the night can make his heart stop. A child out of sight for a moment can bubble up the fear of another dead kid.
John Goldade's voice broke as he spoke of the pain of losing his daughter, something he said was nearly too much for him to speak about in court. Turning to face Kohl, he told the man he wants him to turn his life around.
"This is your last turning point," Goldade said. "And if you can't turn it around from this, there is nothing else here. And you're going to, instead of turning around from this, you're going to keep driving over the cliff to the fiery pit of Hell."
Then, John Goldade told Kohl he forgives him, and he said he hopes the man will one day understand the gravity of that forgiveness.
Before Kohl's sentence was handed down, his defense attorneys said they wanted to make one point.
They acknowledged that his crime created "vast ripples of grief," but they said there is a difference between the judicial, legal and statutory purposes of sentencing ranges, and that the pain everyone suffers cannot be addressed by years in prison. They asked for a standard range sentence, which would be 17 years, six months to 23 years, four months on Kohl's vehicular homicide conviction.
Kohl briefly addressed the court. Speaking from a scrap of notebook paper, he said he wanted to apologize to everyone involved, and, if he could change what happened that day, he would.
"Not because I'm in trouble, but because of the pain it has caused to everyone involved," Kohl said.
Ultimately, Kohl received an exceptional sentence beyond the standard range, a punishment made possible by jurors finding an aggravating circumstance in the crime: that Goldade and Olson were particularly vulnerable victims.
Judge Burton said she wasn't there to shame or berate the defendant, but she kept coming back to wake-up call after wake-up call that Kohl missed in this incident and his life. Kohl has two prior DUIs and a prior felony conviction.
She said Kohl's argument at trial — that he didn't know he struck the girls — defied all logic. She said his crime spree started at 6 a.m., and by 10, the defendant was asleep at the wheel in the middle of the road, awoken by a bystander. He kept driving, and 30 minutes later, Goldade was dead, and Olson was lying injured in a ditch.
Afterward, surveillance video showed him buying snacks at a convenience store before he ditched his truck and rented a storage unit to stash the stolen property he'd taken that morning. Burton asked how Kohl could have the wherewithal to do these things while being ignorant of the deaths he'd just caused. And for the next 11 days, Burton said, the Goldades and the Olsons were left to wonder who had done this to their children.
"It is incomprehensible to me how dark those days must have been," Burton said. "How can a person take the life of a child and not come forward?"
