By Tim Clifford

On April 21 the King County Prosecutor’s Office filed a charge of Vehicular Homicide against 22-year-old Dylan Taylor Powell Morrow following a fatal car crash from 2014.

There was just one issue with this filing: Morrow died this year on Feb. 14.

“We just got word of it yesterday, we will be gathering more information as it comes in” explained Dan Donohoe with the Prosecutor’s Office on April 28, a day before the case was officially dismissed. Prosecutors had been unaware of his passing for over 2 months while examining the case.

Coverage of the charge made it to other news outlets before the Prosecutor’s Office could update them on the status of the case.

The charge was filed following an investigation into a fatal car collision that Morrow was involved in on Feb.28 of 2014. While driving along 4 Avenue S. on his way to work, at 2:45 a.m., Morrow fell asleep at the wheel and crossed over into the oncoming lane, colliding with another car. The other driver, 23-year-old Elwin Trinh, who had just gotten off of a shift at work, was killed at the scene.
While being interviewed by officers Morrow admitted that he must have fallen asleep at the wheel. At that time he was working a few different jobs which didn’t allow him time to get much sleep between shifts. Text messages on Morrow’s phone to his girlfriend reveal he was complaining about feeling fatigued just before the crash.

“Ten minutes before the crash he had texted his girlfriend that he didn’t “know why [he was] so tired.” They exchanged a few more texts about his fatigue. Her last text to him was sent a few minutes before the crash, there was no reply,” read the charging documents.

As Morrow told investigators he believed that he may have gotten about five hours of sleep before driving but was still feeling very “groggy”. He had become accustomed to downing a 5 Hour Energy drink and smoking a cigarette in order to power through.

If Morrow had been tried he would have possibly faced a sentence of 15 to 20 months in prison, far higher than the maximum one year sentence for a DUI.

Though the case has been dismissed it does still work to highlight a hazard that many drivers don’t take into account before driving.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “drowsy driving” is the cause of nearly 100,000 car crashes per year with an estimated 71,000 people injured and 1,500 dead.

“If you’re tired your reaction times are going to be slower, you’re not going to be paying attention. You could be having the same effects as if you were drinking or impaired by a drug,” said Diane Hutcheson, a nurse practitioner at the Avalon Center in the Morgan Junction. The center treats drug and alcohol addiction and also provides DUI assessments for Washington State.

Hutcheson went on to say that drowsy driving is a condition that is often overlooked by many drivers and usually ignored.

“They think they can just drive like normal but when you’re that tired you don’t realize how tired you really are and that’s the danger of it. You probably don’t understand how impaired you are at that time.”