A driver in a New Year's Day head-on crash that fatally injured a Wasilla man is accused of manslaughter after Alaska State Troopers say he made the drive from Houston to Wasilla before the wreck while heavily intoxicated.
Wasilla resident Darin J. Cleveland, 25, is charged with manslaughter, DUI and driving with a suspended license in the death of 57-year-old Pyotr Kudryn following the Jan. 1 crash on Knik-Goose Bay Road. Cleveland's passengers, 26-year-old Ella Williams and 25-year-old Gertrude Ivanoff, suffered life-threatening injuries in the crash.
In an affidavit supporting the charges against Cleveland, trooper Shawn Norman wrote that he responded to the fatal crash just before 6 a.m. on Jan. 1. Norman found two Toyota Corolla sedans, one tan and one red, sitting in Knik-Goose Bay's northbound lane. Kudryn was seat-belted in the red Corolla, unresponsive and suffering from apparent facial injuries.
Cleveland's passengers were also unresponsive but breathing; Norman said both had been "partially ejected" through the tan Corolla's passenger-side front window. As Norman inspected the scene, he said Cleveland got out of the vehicle.
As paramedics arrived, Norman said Cleveland exhibited signs of drunkenness, including bloodshot eyes, the smell of alcohol on his breath and "thick slurred speech."
"Cleveland was also slightly combative and kept having (outbursts)," Norman wrote.
Norman said Cleveland told him he had four beers that evening, and they were retruning from watching New Year's fireworks in Houston when he'd decided to drive Ivanoff back to her home off Knik-Goose Bay Road. When Norman asked Cleveland to rate his drunkenness on a scale of 1 to 10, Cleveland said it was a 5, according to the affidavit.
"I then asked Cleveland if he should have been driving tonight and Cleveland told me he shouldn't have been driving but was trying to take Ivanoff home," Norman wrote.
The interview ended abruptly when Norman noticed that Cleveland's pants "were beginning to soak with blood," prompting medics to determine he needed to be hospitalized.
Norman said Kudryn was declared dead by medics at the scene, following half an hour of CPR, at 6:48 a.m. Ivanoff, Cleveland and Williams were all eventually treated at Anchorage-area hospitals.
A check of Cleveland's documentation showed that his license had been suspended since June 2015, Norman said. Neither Cleveland nor a search of his vehicle produced any proof of insurance.
Troopers also spoke with the driver who had called 911 to report the crash. He told Norman he had been headed south on Knik-Goose Bay Road, when he saw Cleveland's Corolla "pass his vehicle at a high rate of speed" near the Three Bears supermarket.
"After the Corolla passed (the witness) it stayed in the northbound lane and never returned to the southbound lane of travel," Norman wrote. "(He) watched as it continued toward a set of headlights until the impact."
A sample of Cleveland's blood drawn shortly after the crash revealed a blood-alcohol content of 0.191 as well as active components of marijuana when tested by the state crime lab, the charging document said. Alaska's legal blood-alcohol limit for driving is 0.08.
Manslaughter cases against Cleveland and Byron Melton, a driver in another fatal Wasilla-area crash, were filed Friday in Palmer court. Melton is charged in the Feb. 8 death of 15-year-old pedestrian Austin Edenfield on North Pittman Road. Detailed charging documents in Melton's case weren't available this week at the Palmer Courthouse.
Cleveland was being held at the Cook Inlet Pretrial Facility in Anchorage. Court records show him scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 17 in Palmer court.
Reporter Zaz Hollander contributed information to this story.