PORT ANGELES — A 24-year-old Port Angeles woman charged with vehicular homicide in a March 6 wreck that killed a home health nurse pleaded not guilty Friday to an additional charge of witness tampering.
Amber D. Steim pleaded not guilty to vehicular homicide under the influence of alcohol March 9 and posted a $100,000 bail bond Wednesday.
At Friday’s hearing, she also was charged with witness tampering, a Class C felony.
The Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office alleged that Steim asked her passenger at the time of the wreck and her mother to tell attorneys that she drank more alcohol after the wreck and before the ambulance arrived.
She is accused of being drunk when the pickup truck she was driving crossed the centerline on state Highway 112 between Joyce and Port Angeles and struck another vehicle head-on.
The driver of the other vehicle, Ellen J. DeBondt, 44, a nurse with Olympic Medical Center’s home health agency, died at the scene.
Steim had minor injuries and was treated at Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles.
Her passenger, Nicole Boucher, also had minor injuries and was driven from the scene by a friend or family.
Court records showed that Steim’s blood-alcohol level was 0.239 percent after the wreck.
The legal limit in Washington state is 0.08 percent.
If Steim is convicted on the vehicular homicide charge, she faces a sentence of up to life in prison and a $50,000 fine.
The witness tampering charge carries a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine upon conviction.
Steim’s attorney, Ralph Anderson, said at the hearing that he intends to file a motion for a change of venue because of the attention the case has received.
That motion, if filed, and others will be heard at a hearing at 1 p.m. March 31.
The courtroom Friday was packed with people — many of whom were wearing pink paper hearts on their shirts with “Ellen” written on them.
Judge Ken Williams, who presided over the Friday hearing, approved a motion by the defense that a blood sample taken from Steim at the hospital may be tested but not in ways that would destroy the whole sample.
Troberg did not object.
As part of her conditions of release, Steim must drink no alcohol, wear an alcohol-detection bracelet, follow a curfew, refrain from driving and have no contact with Boucher.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
