Driver charged with manslaughter

PALMER — A grand jury has indicted an Anchorage man after lab results allegedly found the active ingredient in marijuana in his blood following a September 2014 fatal car accident.

The indictvment, filed at the Palmer courthouse on Feb. 6, charges Wilton M. Florencio Villa with two counts of manslaughter and one of driving under the influence.

Florencio Villa was southbound on the Parks Highway near Denali State Park when the 2003 Lincoln Navigator he was driving crossed the centerline near Mile 152, according to an Alaska State Trooper press release from the time.

That put the Navigator in the path of a 2000 Saturn SL, driven by Dontaveon Green, 33, of Fairbanks. Patricia Williams, 23, of Fairbanks, also was a passenger in the Saturn. Neither survived the collision, according to the trooper press release.

Florencio Villa and a passenger were taken to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage with serious injuries.

“Witnesses state the Lincoln Navigator was driving erratically prior to the wreck and was all over the place,” reads an account of the accident penned by Palmer Assistant District Attorney Sean Traini and appended to the indictment.

Traini adds that Florencio Villa’s passenger was “critically injured” in the crash.

According to Traini’s statement, a trooper got Florencio Villa’s permission to test his blood. The results came back from the Alaska Statewide Crime Lab on Dec. 30, 2014.

“The results of the toxicology screening of Florencio Villa’s blood … showed a positive result for Carboxy-THC at a level of 33 ng/ml and THC at a level of 2.1 ng/ml,” Traini writes.

State law provides for a maximum amount of alcohol that can be a in a person’s blood stream (according to state statutes it’s, “.08 percent or more by weight of alcohol in the person’s blood or 80 milligrams or more of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood”) state law does not contain such provisions for driving under the influence of drugs.

In the case of both alcohol and drugs, though, it’s enough to win a conviction if prosecutors can simply prove the driver is impaired.

The issue is likely to come up more now that the recreational and medical use of marijuana has been legalized in Alaska. Still, the working draft of marijuana legislation being considered right now in Juneau in the wake of the passage of a ballot initiative legalizing the drug contains no hard number for when a driver is considered impaired.

Washington state, which legalized recreational use of the drug in 2012, has set a limit for driving of 5 nanograms per milliliter, according to media reports from that state.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.