A 42-year-old man has been sentenced to more than six years in prison after pleading guilty to vehicular homicide and driving under the influence in a case where someone was hit and killed while moving a dead elk from a Pierce County road, court records show.
Timothy John Reice was sentenced June 30 in Superior Court for a January 2022 incident that occurred in the 32000 block of state Route 706 near Elbe, records show.
John J. Peoples, 40 of Covington, and others had been waving and holding cellphone lights at oncoming traffic to warn drivers of a road hazard, but Reice kept driving and hit Peoples, who died at the scene, charging papers said.
The victim's son sent a letter to the court in February.
"The tragic death of my father has proven the most emotionally difficult obstacle I've ever endured," Easton James Peoples wrote. "Leaving countless loved ones behind and a lifelong emptiness. This despairing feeling is something I wish no person should ever have to experience."
Reice also was convicted of unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle in a separate case, sentencing documents said. The six-plus years he received in Peoples' death will run concurrently with his sentence in that case.
