Test finds high BAC level in wrong-way driver in fatal crash
The wrong-way driver who caused a crash that killed two sisters and himself on Good Friday had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit at the time of the collision on Interstate 17 in Phoenix, a report shows.
Keaton Allison, 21, had a BAC level of 0.25 percent, according to blood-testing results from the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner.
A blood-alcohol level between 0.16 percent and 0.3 percent qualifies as “severe impairment,” with effects including “dangerously impaired” driving skills and decision-making ability, blackouts and loss of consciousness, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
In Arizona, a DUI is considered “super extreme” when the driver’s BAC level is 0.2 percent or above.
Allison drove nearly 6 miles the wrong way before running head-on into the vehicle in which Karli and Kelsey Richardson were riding at 2:10 a.m. on April 14.
He was driving 15 mph above the speed limit and without headlights, and minutes before the crash, he almost hit another car while driving the wrong way on an exit ramp, according to an Arizona Department of Public Safety report.
Karli, 20, and Kelsey, 18, did not have any drugs or alcohol in their systems at the time of their death, their toxicology reports show.
“I don’t care what anyone says ... He made a choice, and his thought process and his choice killed himself and my daughters, and I’m very angry about that,” said the sisters’ mother, Cathy Hocking.
Karli and Allison were both students at Grand Canyon University but did not appear to have known each other, according to previous Republic reporting. Kelsey had traveled to Arizona from North Carolina to visit her sister, and the two were driving to see the sunrise at the Grand Canyon before they were hit.
Allison’s last purchase was at the Mellow Mushroom bar and restaurant at Happy Valley Road and Interstate 17, which is where he incorrectly entered the I-17 off-ramp before the crash, according to DPS records.
Allison was a volunteer with Young Life, a popular Christian ministry that reaches out to adolescents, and a spokesman for the organization confirmed “some of the people Keaton had dinner with the night of the accident were also volunteer leaders with Young Life.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have any insight into Keaton’s time with his friends following the Young Life event earlier in the day,” said Terry Swenson, vice president of communications for Young Life. “We grieve with and for Keaton’s family and friends and for the family and friends of Karli and Kelsey Richardson, and we pray for understanding and healing for all involved.”
No one who was with Allison before the crash has spoken publicly about that night, apart from one woman who said at his memorial service that she was with him at dinner where he was in an impromptu silly-face-making contest.
Hocking said she wishes she could talk with the people who were with him before the crash.
“It’s not like they’re in trouble,” she said. “They didn’t drive drunk; they didn’t kill anybody, whatever, but they could help a grieving mother know what happened, and they’ve chosen not to, and I say shame on them. I think it’s incredibly wrong.”
Three months after the accident, Hocking said the main word that comes to mind when she thinks of the crash is “vicious.”
“We had to have a closed casket,” she said. “I wasn’t even allowed to hold my children one more time even in their death and kiss on them and love them or anything. He took even that from me because the crash was so violent.”