Driver's sentence questioned

A drunk driver who ran down two Flathead Valley teenagers near Plains in March 2007 may serve as little as one year in Montana State Prison — a prospect that has riled some members of the community.

Daniel Wade Resler, 32, has admitted killing 19-year-old Brad Michael Williams of Somers and 16-year-old Kyle David McCullugh of Kalispell as they walked to a convenience store.

Resler’s blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit.

“I really have a problem with the way this is being handled, from the top down,” said Williams’ mother, Carla Hayek. “Innocent victims and their families aren’t even getting the rights drunk drivers are, which is so frustrating to me.”

In exchange for Resler’s guilty plea to two counts of vehicular homicide, prosecutors are recommending Resler receive two 30-year prison sentences — each with 25 years suspended — to run concurrently.

He would be incarcerated for at least one year before becoming eligible for the WATCh program — an intensive, six-month treatment regimen for felony DUI offenders at Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs.

After completing that program, Resler would be considered for placement in a pre-release center or other intensive supervision program.

“Justice to me … after killing two young men is not a year and a half,” Hayek said. “I think he should serve one year for every year of life he took.”

Sanders County Attorney Coleen I. Magera has said the terms of the plea agreement were reached in light of “several evidentiary concerns that had to be considered in the negotiations.”

Hayek believes Magera was referring to a blood sample taken from Resler at Clark Fork Valley Hospital, a sample that she was told may have been mislabeled or left unattended at the hospital.

Records show the Montana Highway Patrol requested Sanders County Sheriff’s deputies to contact Resler at the hospital to obtain a blood sample, and that the sample was taken to the state crime lab in Missoula for analysis on March 5, 2007.

The Sanders County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on what is primarily a Montana Highway Patrol investigation and the Highway Patrol referred inquiries to Magera, citing the case’s active status.

Magera did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Hayek said her family was left out of the plea-bargain process and informed of Magera’s decision only after the deal was struck.

“We were not included in any of the particulars at all,” said Hayek, who described her son as a young man with an old soul. “Now I’m a very bitter mother because of Sanders County. The most difficult part is not having actual justice served in the end.”

Hayek said she would like to see a strict statutory minimum for people convicted of vehicular homicide while under the influence. Currently, there isn’t one.

“It needs to be mandatory. I don’t want people to go through a year of hell and still not see justice,” she said, adding that she would like to see changes made as soon as possible.

“Resler admitted to drinking, he admitted to driving. I hope they never get the blood out from underneath their fingernails,” she said.

Efforts to reach McCullugh’s family for comment were unsuccessful.

According to the Montana Highway Patrol, Resler was driving a 2003 Dodge pickup truck westbound on Montana 200 just before 2 a.m. on the morning of March 3, 2007.

Williams was in Plains visiting McCullugh when the car the boys were driving broke down, Hayek said. So McCullugh’s grandmother gave the pair a ride to their destination, the home of another friend.

While waiting for their friend to arrive, Williams and McCullugh, on foot, decided to make a junk-food run to a nearby convenience store.

At a curve about a mile east of Plains, Resler drifted off the right side of the highway and struck the pair — who were walking in the gravel on the side of the road, also westbound.

McCullugh was found lying 20 feet away from the highway and 60 feet away from Williams.

After the collision, Resler traveled for some distance with three of his four tires off the pavement. He then appears to have overcorrected, traveled back across both lanes of traffic, and rolled the truck into a ditch on the highway’s south side.

Williams died at the scene; McCullugh was flown to St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, where he died the next day.

A driver who minutes earlier had passed the boys about a quarter-mile past Henry Creek told investigators she saw Williams and McCullugh walking far enough off the roadway she did not feel the need to switch lanes to pass them.

The proposed sentence for Resler also has a community service component that will require Resler to clean a one-mile stretch of Montana 200 near where the collision occurred, make $100 donations in the names of Williams and McCullugh annually to the Montana chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and work with either that organization or local schools on drinking and driving education for the next decade.

Resler is scheduled to be sentenced in Sanders County District Court on March 4. Judge Kim Christopher is not obligated to follow the plea deal.

Since the original story about the sentence recommendation appeared on Dec. 31, Inter Lake readers have posted 119 online comments — the highest reader response of any story to date.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com