ISP: Driver killed in crash was drunk
SANDPOINT — An Athol man killed in a head-on crash on U.S. Highway 95 in Careywood last fall was driving drunk in the wrong lane.
An Idaho State Police report obtained by The Daily Bee through a public records request indicates Michael Lee Johns had a blood-alcohol level of 0.34, which is more than four times the legal limit to drive.
The deadly crash happened on Nov. 9, 2009, near Beak’s Roadhouse.
Johns, the report said, was headed north in the southbound lane of travel when his Dodge Intrepid plowed into a southbound Jeep Liberty being driven by a Bonners Ferry man.
“It is unclear at this time why Johns was traveling north in the southbound lane of travel,” Trooper Jess Spike said in his report on the crash.
The weather was clear on the night of the collision and road conditions were dry, the report noted. The section of highway the collision occurred on was straight and level.
Johns, 43, was fatally injured in the crash. The airbag in his sedan deployed, but he was not wearing a seat belt, the report said. He was also driving without insurance.
The driver of the Jeep sport utility vehicle, Jayme Ruben Shottanana, was taken to Kootenai Medical Center in Coeur d’Alene with serious injuries, but was released several days after the crash, the report said.
Shottanana, 27, was wearing a seat belt when the airbags in the sport utility vehicle he was driving deployed, the report said.
Johns was convicted of drunken driving in Kootenai County in 1999, according to Idaho Supreme Court Data Repository.
The circumstances of the crash are similar to another fatal head-on collision in the same area in December 2008.
William David Deardorff was driving drunk when he crossed the highway’s center line and crashed into a Jeep Liberty, killing one woman and seriously injuring another. Deardorff also had prior DUI convictions.
Deardorff, 54, pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and aggravated DUI. He’s serving a 10- to 15-year sentence at the Idaho Correctional Center in Kuna.