A King County Superior Court judge sentenced a Bellevue man on Sept. 13 in a 2023 vehicular homicide in Auburn that killed a 27-year-old Kent man.
Judge Josephine Wiggs sentenced 39-year-old Ryan Arvie of Bellevue on Sept. 13 to 10 years and 10 months in confinement on counts of vehicular homicide and felony DUI.
According to charging documents, on May 11, 2023, Arvie crashed head-on into 27-year-old Karl Ortiz’s vehicle as he traveled the wrong way on State Route 18, traveling westbound in the eastbound lanes. Ortiz, who grew up in Gig Harbor, had moved to Kent.
Washington State Patrol troopers located Ortiz dead in the driver’s seat of his vehicle following the collision.
Arvie presented to troopers with “bloodshot and watery eyes, severe mood swings, and slurred speech,” according to charging documents.
King County prosecutors filed a charge of vehicular homicide against Arvie on May 17, 2023, with enhancements for reckless driving and driving under the influence.
On Aug. 26, Arvie accepted a plea deal, pleading guilty to vehicular homicide with a reckless driving enhancement in addition to felony DUI.
Arvie received a sentence of 10 years and 10 months on the vehicular homicide count and one year and eight months on the felony DUI count, with both sentences to run concurrently, totaling to 10 years and 10 months.
Additionally, the court sentenced Arvie to 2 years and 6 months of community custody following confinement.
Ortiz’s wife, mother-in-law, and mother attended Arvie’s Sept. 13 sentencing hearing, in addition to Arvie’s former husband and mother.
Ortiz’s mother, Arvie’s former husband, and Arvie’s mother addressed the court in statements at Arvie’s sentencing.
A victim’s advocate read a letter from Ortiz’s wife.
”I am not the only one enduring the agony of losing Karl,” stated Ortiz’s wife in the letter read to the court. “Some might describe a hole that Karl’s death has left in their lives, but the metaphor is not quite right. Holes have a chance of being patched up; repaired. The void Karl left behind is unique. Karl is not one in a million. Karl is one in eight billion. No amount of pressure will staunch the flow of grief pouring from our wounds.”
Ortiz’s wife requested Judge Wiggs hand down a maximum sentence to Arvie. The total standard range sentence in King County for vehicular homicide ranges between 8 years and 6 months and 11 years and 4 months.
“My present tense only exists because Karl has irrevocably changed me. I carry him with me wherever I go,” Ortiz’s wife’s letter states. “The beat of my heart and the breath in my lungs are just as much his as they are mine. It is for that same reason that since he is gone, I am gone too.”
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