PORT ORCHARD — A 20-year-old Port Orchard woman was charged last week with vehicular homicide for allegedly causing a car wreck in September that seriously injured her 21-year-old passenger, who lingered in a coma for about six months before dying in March.
Kelcie Caroline Jolliffe, 20, told a Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office deputy she was driving Lacey Ashley Rose to work at Pizza Hut on Mile Hill Drive before the Sept. 20 crash on the 11300 block of Glenwood Road Southwest.
Jolliffe was booked Saturday into the Kitsap County Jail and was pleaded not guilty on Monday.
Lacey remembered
Loved ones remember Rose for her sense of humor and loyalty to friends along with her love of animals and hiking.
"She could light up a room when she walked into it," said Rose's aunt, Tameria Lindsey. "She had a laugh to die for, she was funny."
Rose was diagnosed with diabetes at age 5, and was a subject in a 2007 Kitsap Sun story about children with diabetes. Dealing with the disease strengthen her character, Lindsey said. It was also the source of Lindsey's nickname for her.
"She's my little duck," Lindsey said. When Rose was a little girl, she lived next door to Lindsey and would follow her around like a duckling. They would go to the store together and during one trip Rose asked Lindsey to buy her a duck balloon.
At the time, Rose required two insulin shots but had adults administer them. Lindsey told her if she could administer her own shots, she would buy the duck balloon.
"And she did," Lindsey said.
Crash scene investigation
There is a slight bend in the road at the location of the 2017 collision. The speed limit there is 40 mph. The roadway was damp at the time of the wreck, 4:33 p.m., but a witness told investigators Jolliffe’s Toyota appeared to be traveling at an “extreme high speed.”
A witness driving from the opposite direction told investigators he saw the Toyota come out of the curve out of control at “an extremely high rate of speed.” The Toyota was spinning so that it was in his lane. He struck the passenger side of the Toyota, where Rose was seated.
“The speedometer of the (Toyota) was stuck at approximately 75 mph in the impact, which does not solidly prove an impact speed, but it does indicate that the vehicle was traveling extremely fast,” an investigator wrote.
The man who struck the Toyota suffered a minor injury to his wrist.
Rose suffered extensive and debilitating injuries and never woke up from the coma. She died March 23. Joliffe was injured as well and spent six days in the hospital, according to court documents. Both were wearing safety belts.
Jolliffe said she usually traveled backroads, which she is familiar with, because the route has fewer stop lights and less traffic, but does not remember anything about the collision, according to court documents.
