The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

A jury of his Walla Walla-area peers deliberated for two hours before handing down their verdict in the case of Melvin Bohleen, the elderly Dayton man who was accused of vehicular homicide in a collision that killed Westside cyclist Sarah Eustis nearly a year ago.

The 12 largely middle-aged jurors, headed by foreman Duane Mitchell, a biologist with the U.S. Corps of Engineers, found him not guilty. His attorney Michael Hubbard said as terrible and tragic as the collision was, it was "an accident, not a crime."

But her surviving husband, now a widower, said drivers like Bohleen, harmless as the...