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A drunken driver who killed one passenger and injured another in a one-vehicle crash in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park in May is going to prison.
A federal judge sentenced Kenneth J. Ewing to three years in prison Monday for involuntary manslaughter and one year in jail for negligent injury. Both terms will run at the same time. Ewing has six weeks to turn himself in to begin serving his sentences.
In addition, U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright ordered Ewing to pay $1,400 restitution for the funeral expenses of the passenger who died.
Ewing, 44, was behind the wheel of a pickup truck that failed to negotiate a curve on Highway 11 and rolled over. John A. Becker, 48, was thrown onto the roadway and pinned under the vehicle. He died at the scene. Another passenger, a 53-year-old man who was also thrown onto the roadway and pinned by the truck, survived. Ewing escaped injury and was found walking around immediately after the crash.
A National Parks Service ranger found beer bottles and two opened bottles of vodka, one nearly empty, at the scene and smelled alcohol on all three men. Ewing had a blood-
alcohol concentration of
0.277 grams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood more than three hours after the crash. The legal threshold for drunken driving is 0.08 BAC.
Ewing told another judge in November that he believed he was driving
55 mph in a 45 mph zone.
He was originally charged with first-degree negligent homicide, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison under state law. He pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter under federal law, which carries a maximum eight-year prison term, and second-degree negligent injury under state law, which carries a maximum one-year jail term.
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