Lewiston judge cuts bond amount for manslaughter suspect

A 2nd District Court judge cut in half the bond amount – setting it at $75,000 – and ordered mediation in a Lewiston manslaughter case that left a woman dead in a car on the Lewiston byway in early October as her boyfriend walked away.

At the arraignment of Eric L. Siegler, 39, Thursday in Lewiston District Court on felony charges of vehicular manslaughter and a persistent violator enhancement, Judge Jay P. Gaskill ordered conditions for bond in the event Siegler gets out of jail, where he has been housed since the Oct. 3 incident.

Siegler is accused of being drunk after midnight when he drove his 2015 Nissan Sentra off the southern embankment of the levee bypass, crashing into trees. The crash, not far from the railroad bridge, allegedly killed his girlfriend, Katherine J. Bonner-Bande. Court records show Siegler’s blood-alcohol level was 0.123 after he had walked from the crash site to St. Joseph Regional Medical Center.

He told dispatchers that he didn’t have a phone and that he went looking for one and ended up at the hospital while his fiancee was unresponsive in the car’s passenger seat. He said his 22-year-old girlfriend had been driving the Nissan, but after the crash he pulled her into the passenger seat, according to a police report.

“I got her to change seats,” he told dispatchers, according to court records.

Although Thursday’s hearing was supposed to be an arraignment in which a defendant pleads to a charge, Siegler did not offer a plea and instead Gaskill set the case for mediation with a status conference late next month.

Deputy Prosecutor Anne Kelleher asked the court to set a substantial bond, noting that the defendant has four times failed to appear for court in Nez Perce County and has an escape and flight charge in Colorado. Kelleher added that conditions of bond, including wearing an alcohol- and location-monitoring device, as well as daily check-ins with probation and parole, are just as easy to defy as his previous terms of probation.

“He continues to drink. He wasn’t compliant with his supervision terms,” she said,

Kelleher agreed with defense attorney Rick Cuddihy to pursue mediation.

“It gets the family involved; it promotes closure,” she said.

Siegler has three prior felony convictions, including two burglary convictions and a grand theft conviction dating back to 2005. He waived his preliminary hearing earlier this month in lieu of mediation.