Driver Sentenced To Year In Jail For Fatal Collision

Michael Opland sat stiffly in the courtroom pew Monday, fighting back tears while he awaited his sentencing.

Opland drove his truck head-on into Darlene King’s car last January as he attempted to pass five cars on an icy Highway 41.

In November, a jury found Opland guilty of vehicular manslaughter in the death of King, a mother of four and a popular employee of the Kootenai County commissioners’ office.

The jury reduced the charge to a gross misdemeanor, which meant that the most jail time Opland could get was a year.

Opland let out two agonized sighs as he took his place next to his attorney, and prepared to listen to King’s family ask the judge to put Opland away for as long as possible.

“It was a very tragic mistake,” Opland said in a barely audible, choked voice. “It’s hard to deal with. I wasn’t out to try to hurt anybody.”

Opland’s attorney, Glen Walker, read portions of letters from friends and family, describing the personal hell that Opland has gone through since King’s death.

Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas brought three of King’s family members to the stand to describe their suffering, and outlined Opland’s lengthy record of traffic violations, concluding that “this is an individual who just doesn’t get it.”

Despite the evidence of remorse, Judge Gary Haman sentenced Opland to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, with the possibility of work-release after six months.

“Mr. Opland isn’t an evil, Jack the Ripper type person,” Haman said.

But, he added, a message needs to be sent to the community that “when the roads get slippery and slick, you don’t drive like it’s summertime, and too many people seem to do that.

“If it were limited to their own lives, it would be all right,” he said. “I wouldn’t pass a line of five cars on that highway - and I’ve been driving it since I was 14 - in the summer time.”

Opland is now 39, the same age that King was when she died. Her 14-year-old daughter and husband struggle to get by without her, said Angela Buhler, King’s grown daughter. Bob King suffered a stroke after the accident.

“I watch my dad trying to do the things he knows need to be done, trying to be a mother and a father, and he doesn’t know how to do both,” Buhler said, crying freely.

Although Douglas asked Haman to order Opland to pay child support for the youngest daughter, the judge said the family could pursue that in the civil courts.

“I would think there would be pretty strong evidence of liability,” Haman said.

As the bailiff snapped the cuffs onto Opland’s wrists and led him away, his fiance called out, “I love you,” before rushing from the courtroom.

Opland’s brother-in-law, who refused to give his name, said he thought the court system has a double standard.

“I can think of other situations that have come up recently, two deaths, that haven’t even been prosecuted,” he said, mentioning one Post Falls traffic accident that killed a high school student.

As for King’s mother, Eleanor McQuarrie, a year isn’t enough jail time for the man who killed her daughter.

“I wish I could have Darlene back in a year’s time,” she said.

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