SNOHOMISH — The causing driver of a March 9 head-on crash just north of the Snohomish River Bridge on state Route 9 had open containers of alcohol in her recently purchased Volvo, according to a police report. She told state troopers she hadn’t installed her mandatory ignition interlock device yet.
She drifted into the opposite lane and hit a Honda, critically injuring the Snohomish-area mom driving it and also hospitalizing her daughter.
Five weeks later, Gina Veloni, the mom in the Honda, was still at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett. She required six surgeries in three weeks, she said in a phone interview, and sustained serious injuries to a leg as well as her arms and shoulder. Veloni said early on there was uncertainty whether she would survive.
Her daughter, a multisport athlete, spent three days in Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, and is now recuperating.
They were a mere 10 minutes away from home, coming back from a five-hour trip to that weekend’s middle school select basketball tournament in Spokane.
Both cars would have been going 50 mph toward each other. The crash blocked both lanes of state Route 9.
Police said a breath scan found the causing driver, age 39, had a 0.254 blood-alcohol level. The state’s legal limit is 0.08; a website about blood-alcohol levels says past 0.25 a person encounters severe impairment in being able to function.
The Washington State Patrol arrested the causing driver that night on evidence of vehicular assault for substantially injuring people while driving under the influence.
A blood draw was taken on the causing driver. The resulting toxicology reports from that blood draw can take months, Snohomish Police Chief Nathan Alanis said.
Those would go with charges. The county Prosecutor’s Office has not received a referral from police with recommended charges as of April 9, a paralegal in the prosecutors’ office said.
The Tribune is not identifying the causing driver in this story because she has not been arraigned in court on any charges, which is the newspaper’s usual practice. The Tribune sought, but could not find, a freely available phone number or email for the causing driver to allow them ability to comment.
Veloni’s attorney Matt Russell whose Everett firm has the case, said at least half of the serious injury cases he sees involve the causing driver having a drug or alcohol DUI.
Russell said Veloni has incurred “at least several hundreds of thousands of dollars” in medical claims.
Veloni just wants to go home, and to be able to walk again.
She’s getting hung up from being discharged into physical therapy rehabilitation because of paperwork.
“The problem is auto insurance companies aren’t going to offer a single dime to help (for medical) until a release is signed, and that’s after a settlement,” Russell said. Settlement amounts are sometimes capped, and don’t cover the actual costs of a serious injury claim.
The causing driver has since been discharged from Providence, a hospital spokesman said April 9.
Veloni praised the upswell of people who have come to visit, as well as the basketball players who sent cards and set up a meal train. Two weeks in, she said to herself: “God’s not done with us yet.”
To protect oneself
For people who want to financially protect themselves as much as possible, Russell said they should be contacting their insurance company and have a lot of underinsured motorist coverage and uninsured motorist coverage on their policies to absorb medical costs when things happen. Another consideration is to buy an umbrella policy, he said. The state minimums are $10,000; a serious accident quickly eats it up.
“People think ‘it won’t happen to you,’ but it has nothing to do with you” when another driver causes a serious crash, Russell said.
