Driver in April crash charged

PALMER — A surgical tech who hit a motorcyclist in April has been charged with drunken driving and manslaughter.

Ross Andrew Forys, 28, was allegedly out barhopping in his orange 2012 Jeep Wrangler on April 5 when, at 10:06 p.m. at Bogard Road and Caribou Street, he ran over a 1980 Yamaha motorcycle.

Alaska State Troopers at the time said that Forys was making a left turn when he hit the motorcycle.

Onboard the motorcycle was Cameron MacDonald, also 28. MacDonald was pinned under the Jeep when troopers arrived on scene. The affidavit that trooper Joel Miner filed in the case against Forys begins with a dramatic account of what happened there.

“I decided to extricate him from under the Jeep for further assessment and possible CPR. I enlisted the help of witnesses/bystanders to lift the driver’s side of the Jeep, which allowed Trooper Jason Crockett and me just enough room to pull MacDonald out from under the Jeep. We rolled MacDonald over onto his back while I maintained spinal alignment and held MacDonald’s head,” Miner writes.

He said that both he and Crockett noticed Forys smelled like booze. Forys was unhurt and at first declined medical treatment. When troopers told him that they were going to draw his blood to check it for alcohol, though, he asked to be checked out and get therapeutic services, Miner writes. The trooper says that

Forys also refused to sign a form consenting to a blood draw, then demanded a doctor be present.

When troopers asked him about that, Forys said he felt threatened.

“Forys then said, ‘I’m very upset about what happened. I was jaw thrusting the guy and giving mouth to mouth.” Not sure if I heard him correctly, I asked again and he restated,” Miner writes. “I advised Forys that I was (one of) the troopers on scene who had pulled MacDonald out from under his Jeep, and that he had not done mouth to mouth on MacDonald. Forys then claimed he had crawled under the Jeep with two people holding him and he did CPR.”

Miner told Forys that troopers had had to remove MacDonald’s helmet, that it would have been impossible to do CPR with that helmet on.

“Forys then refused to speak with me further and refused a blood draw,” Miner writes.

The blood draw happened, though, with help from a search warrant that Miner got from a judge. The eventual result: .208, two and a half times the .08 legal limit for driving.

Miner also spends a significant portion of the affidavit detailing how he reconstructed Forys’ night prior to the accident. He said Forys mentioned being at Locals, a restaurant on Parks Highway.

With help from a server there, he found out that Forys had had four drinks, and got a name for the co-worker he’d met there. An interview with the co-worker revealed stops at Tailgaters, Last Frontier Brewing company and Schwabenhoff. Drinks the co-worker remembered Forys having at those places brought the night’s total to eight.

On May 5, Miner writes, he talked to another of Forys’ co-workers, who also happens to be Forys’ roommate.

Miner, “was advised that Forys had been discharged from (a psychiatric facility) in Anchorage over one week earlier, had returned home for a few hours before leaving Alaska with the assistance of Forys’ attorney,” Miner writes.

The trooper eventually tracked Forys down to a drug and alcohol treatment center in San Juan Capistrano, Calif.

Forys has so far met his court hearings since he was charged Friday, though it’s not clear if he’s been brought back to the state. Courts in Alaska allow defendants to appear via telephone. Other than the manslaughter case, Forys’ only criminal history in Alaska is a speeding ticket from February.

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