Man Sentenced to More Than Two Years for Chase Down I-5

A Centralia man who pleaded guilty last week to a bevy of charges, including vehicular assault, will spend just shy of two and a half years behind bars followed by 18 months on community custody in accordance with a plea deal with the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office.

Stuart A. Acosta, 24, has been in the Lewis County Jail since Aug. 3, when he was booked after crashing his car just off Interstate 5 — the conclusion of a high-speed chase with a Washington State Patrol trooper. The crash left a passenger in Acosta’s car with a serious injury.

In Lewis County Superior Court Wednesday morning, with Judge Joely O’Rourke presiding, Acosta was handed numerous sentences for seven different offenses with all of them set to run concurrently with one another, meaning the largest sentence — 29 months for one count of vehicular assault — engulfed the lesser sentences.

During the hearing, Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead presented to O’Rourke an image that he described as the scalp of the person injured during the chase in August. He said the image depicted the victim’s “scalp placed onto his head.” Court documents described a grisly injury, saying “a portion of (the victim’s) scalp was detached from his skull.”

During the hearing, Halstead asked that Acosta avoid contact with the victim for 10 years. Acosta’s attorney, Christopher Baum, disputed that element of the sentence. Acosta and the victim are friends, said Baum, adding that the assault wasn’t intentional, but rather a symptom of reckless and intoxicated driving. O’Rourke ordered Acosta to stay away from the victim for one year.

According to a probable cause affidavit, on Aug. 2, a trooper on northbound I-5 was alerted to a hit and run, and saw Acosta’s vehicle driving in a lane marked off for construction. A chase ensued, reaching speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and ending on the Exit 88 ramp where Acosta’s vehicle flipped onto its hood.

He pleaded guilty last week to vehicular assault, attempting to elude a pursuing police vehicle, hit and run, driving with a revoked license, reckless endangerment in a construction zone and failure to identify himself.

He pleaded guilty to one additional felony from a separate incident in 2016, where Acosta and two other males twice confronted a man in Centralia and threatened him with a knife — and in one instance a woman was struck in the face when she tried to intervene.

Baum said Wednesday during his client’s sentencing hearing that the deal was reached between himself and the prosecutor’s office to drop an additional charge of second-degree assault attached to the earlier incident.

O’Rourke ruled that Acosta not make contact with the victim in that case for five years.

During a brief address to the judge, Acosta said he wanted to apologize to anyone he put in danger.