A woman who drove with marijuana in her system on state Route 7 in Spanaway and fatally struck a 47-year-old woman walking on the highway was sentenced Friday to five years in prison.
Taylor Renae Tovoli, 27, pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide for the Dec 29, 2023 incident that killed Tonja Anna Marie Johnson, of Lakewood. According to court records, a 5-year-old girl who was in the defendant's vehicle was also injured in the wreck.
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Stanley Rumbaugh handed down the punishment, which was a year longer than attorneys for the prosecution and defense agreed to recommend. The sentence was still below the standard sentencing range of 78-102 months in prison for defendants prosecuted in similar cases, .
Prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence below the standard range in exchange for Tovoli's guilty plea, court records show. She has no prior felony convictions.
Tovoli specified in her July 30 guilty plea that she was under the influence of marijuana when the collision occurred. It's unclear how much of the drug was in her system. The results of a blood draw conducted after the wreck were not available in court records. The legal limit for THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis, is 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood, according to state law.
Relatives of the victim attended Friday's sentencing hearing and addressed the court, records show. According to her obituary, Johnson was a mother to three daughters.
The wreck occurred at about 9:47 p.m. near 208th Street East, about a mile-and-a-half south of the Roy Y. According to the probable cause document, Washington State Patrol troopers determined that Tovoli was driving north on state Route 7 in a 1989 Honda Civic at a high speed when she struck Johnson in a travel lane.
Johnson was reportedly approaching 208th Street pushing a shopping cart when the incident occurred. State route 7 does not have sidewalks before that intersection. According to the probable cause document, the collision severed the victim's legs. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
A witness reported to troopers that after the driver struck Johnson, the Honda went left across all lanes of travel and left the roadway. Troopers found that the driver went through a fence and struck a U-Haul box truck in a parking lot, where the vehicle came to a stop.
The girl who was in Tovoli's Honda got out of the vehicle and sought help after the wreck, according to court records. Tovoli was trapped in the vehicle until medical personnel extracted her. The girl and Tovoli were transported to area hospitals for their injuries.
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