Woman sentenced for crashing into patrol car while intoxicated

PALMER — A woman was sentenced to eight months in jail Monday for her part in a drunken car chase that smashed an Alaska State Troopers patrol vehicle.

Dona Carnahan said the crash was unintended.

“I didn’t mean to hit the cop car,” she said. “I can’t take it back and that’s the way it is. I’m sorry.”

Carnahan’s trip through the legal system began on Christmas Day 2013 with a frantic call to police at 12:12 a.m. According to an affidavit Trooper Lee Phillips filed in court, she said she’d armed herself with a gun and that someone had taken someone from her house. She was going to go searching for the person.

A 40-mph pursuit on icy roads ended with her vehicle spun around facing the wrong way. She then rammed the pursuing trooper head-on.

Carnahan doesn’t have a prior criminal history to speak of save a pair of drunken driving convictions, one in 1995 and the other in 2002. The law provides for a felony charge on the third drunken driving arrest, but only when a person is charged three times with the crime in the same 10-year period. Assistant District Attorney Shawn Traini said the sentence agreed upon before Monday’s hearing was an appropriate one, focused as it was on getting Carnahan into treatment.

“It seems to me that whenever alcohol is involved, unfortunately the defendant has made poor decisions,” he said.

Carnahan’s attorney, Ariel Toft with the Public Defender Agency in Palmer, agreed that alcohol was the root of her client’s criminal acts.

“This was obviously a very bad night for Miss Carnahan and Trooper Phillips,” Toft said. “She feels remorseful for how she behaved.”

Superior Court Judge Greg Heath told Carnahan that Phillips’ affidavit described a scary situation involving a car crashing into his trooper vehicle.

Here Carnahan interjected, “I couldn’t see,” she said. “I thought I was helping find the person.”

Heath said that either way, it was a very dangerous state of affairs.

“Sadly, we just had a situation where an individual was shot in similar circumstances,” he said, referring to the March 9 shooting of Gordon Samel, who died after being shot by Wasilla police and state troopers following a pursuit through Wasilla. Troopers say Samel was driving toward a Wasilla police officer who was on foot when the shots were fired.

Heath urged Carnahan to stick with her treatment and follow the rules laid out for her by probations officers.

If she does, “you’ll probably never come back to this courtroom,” he said.

“Hope not,” Carnahan replied.

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