PORT ANGELES — Amber Steim’s vehicular homicide trial has been reset for April 16.
The 24-year-old Port Angeles woman is accused of driving nearly three times over the legal limit for alcohol when her vehicle crashed head-on with one driven by Ellen DeBondt, a 44-year-old home health nurse from Crescent Bay, authorities said.
DeBondt was killed instantly in the wreck last March on state Highway 112 east of Joyce.
The trial was previously scheduled to begin Monday.
Clallam County Superior Court Judge Ken Williams reset the trial Monday because Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly needed more time for negotiations and pre-trial motions. Defense attorney Ralph Anderson did not object.
Kelly recently took a month off to attend to a family matter.
Steim also is charged with two counts of witness tampering for allegedly phoning her mother and a friend from jail and asking them to say she drank alcohol after the wreck because she was in pain.
More than a dozen of DeBondt’s friends and family members attended Monday’s hearing.
Steim is being held in the Clallam County jail on $500,000 bail.
She originally posted a $100,000 bail bond but was remanded back to jail
Dec. 14 after the alcohol monitoring device she was required to wear detected alcohol in her system.
If convicted, Steim faces a sentence of between 31 and 41 months in prison and a $50,000 fine, prosecutors have said.
Pretrial motions are set to begin on April 3.
The trial is scheduled to last four to five days.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
