U.S. NAVY OFFICER IN JAPAN FACES PRISON OVER CRASH

For Ridge Alkonis, a U.S. Navy lieutenant living in Japan, a springtime trip with his wife and three children to Mount Fuji was intended as fun and leisurely family time before an expected deployment.

What happened next, and why, is a matter of dispute. But it gave rise to a three-year prison sentence.

In the telling by Alkonis’ family and supporters, the naval officer abruptly lost consciousness in the car, causing him to slump over behind the wheel after suffering acute mountain sickness. Japanese prosecutors and the judge who sentenced him contend he fell asleep while drowsy, shirking a duty to pull over immediately.

Alkonis’ car veered into parked cars and pedestrians in a parking lot, striking an elderly woman and her sonin-law, both of whom later died. With a Japanese court set to hear an appeal Wednesday of Alkonis’ prison sentence, his parents are pleading for leniency for an act they say was nothing more than a terrible accident but that prosecutors view as deadly negligence.

He is home in Japan pending the appeal.

“The word that comes to our mind is fairness. We want him to be treated fairly for an accident,” said Alkonis’ father, Derek Alkonis, of Dana Point. “We don’t feel like it’s been that way. We know it hasn’t been that way. And it concerns us that our son has been given a threeyear prison sentence for an accident.”

The victims’ families could not be contacted by The Associated Press because their names are redacted in court records reviewed by the AP.

The upcoming hearing is the latest development in the case against Alkonis, 34, a specialist in underseas warfare and acoustic engineering who has spent nearly seven years in Japan as a civilian volunteer and naval officer.

The case is playing out against the backdrop of longstanding concerns by Japan about bad behavior, however sporadic, by the tens of thousands of U.S. service members in the country and a sense that they are afforded preferential treatment.