Suit filed over fatal collision

SANDPOINT — Legal woes are compounding for a Sagle man who struck two pedestrians, killing one and seriously injuring another.

Counsel for the collision’s surviving pedestrian, Zualita Updike, is seeking damages for negligence against Peter Franklin Goullette, according to records filed in 1st District Court.

Idaho State Police said Goullette was driving southbound in a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck when he struck Updike and Katherine K. Stelzer, who were also headed southbound. The collision occurred in the 400 block of McGhee Road in Ponderay on June 30.

Stelzer, 61, of Mead, Wash., was fatally injured. Updike, 50, of Clark Fork, was seriously injured, according to state police. They were employees of Litehouse Foods and on a lunch break when they were struck, company officials have said.

Updike’s counsel, Sandpoint attorney Todd Reed, alleges in a civil suit that Goullette was driving recklessly and carelessly at the time of the collision.

“There were no visual obstructions in the way of the defendant immediately before his actions,” Reed said in the suit, which was filed on Nov. 18.

The suit alleges Updike was permanently injured.

Goullette, 23, has not yet been charged in connection with the deadly crash. He is accused of vehicular manslaughter, although it remains unclear if he will be prosecuted at misdemeanor or felony level, according to court records.

Goullette is serving one- to three-year term for violating the terms of his probation in burglary and unlawful possession of a firearm cases which predated the McGhee Road collision. Goullette was imprisoned in the state’s retained jurisdiction program, but was released after serving less than a year. Goullette is accused of using marijuana prior to the deadly crash and drinking alcohol in the weeks after the crash, which violated the terms of his probation.

Judge Barbara Buchanan ordered Goullette in September to serve his underlying prison terms, concluding that his performance on probation was “abysmal.”

Goullette is serving his sentence at the Idaho State Correctional Institution in Kuna, according to the Idaho Department of Correction’s website. He is eligible for parole next month and a parole hearing is set for March 2017, IDOC’s website indicates.