A man has been convicted of DUI vehicular homicide for crashing his car while driving drunk in Puyallup in 2019, killing his 52-year-old wife.
Jeffrey Lepley, 51, was convicted Tuesday by a jury in Pierce County Superior Court. He is to be sentenced Nov. 19. Typical prison sentences for cases such as this range from six years, six months to eight years, six months.
Lepley was driving his Jaguar the afternoon of July 14, 2019 on Pioneer Way East with his wife, Trisha Lepley, in the passenger seat when the crash occurred. Lepley suffered a laceration to his ear, and his wife died at the scene.
At the time, deputies said Lepley admitted he'd been drinking prior to the wreck, and firefighters and a sheriff's deputy noted that he smelled of alcohol. Lepley was arrested after the crash, but a toxicology report did not come back until March 2020 and he was charged later that year.
During the course of the roughly week-long trial, the state had a list of witnesses to pull from which included a phlebotomist who drew blood from Lepley after the crash, Pierce County deputies and a Washington State Patrol toxicologist, among others.
The toxicology report showed Lepley's blood-alcohol content was 0.19 percent, higher than the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
Prosecutors described how the crash occurred in charging papers filed in August 2020. At a curve in the road, deputies reported, Lepley crossed the center line, then over corrected, sending the car into a slide where it collided with a guard rail and went down an embankment.
The car rolled and came to a stop upside down about 30 yards from the road.
Investigators said Lepley was driving faster than the 35 mph speed limit based on evidence at the scene. Lepley was transported to Tacoma General Hospital and had his blood drawn later that day.
