Advertisement

Douglas Vansickle, 48, of Deckerville, Michael Lautner, 45, of Minden City and Monica Tibbetts, 45, of Ubly were originally charged with failing to stop at the scene of a personal injury accident. The Sept. 9, 2007 crash claimed the life of Tom Kritzman, 46, of Deckerville.

On Monday, the trio pled guilty in 73rd District Court to the amended charge of attempt failure to stop. Under the plea bargain agreement with the prosecutor's office, the three would serve 90 days of a maximum 180-day jail sentence "up front", with the balance of the jail time held in abeyance pending completion of probation, said Prosecutor James Young.

The original charge carried a maximum sentence of one year in jail.

Judge James Marcus is scheduled to sentence the three on Jan. 23. He is not required to accept the terms of the agreement.

Young said the Kritzman family was contacted before the agreement was concluded.

"They were consulted, ‘do you want to go to trial or do you want to conclude this matter,'" said Young. "The family wanted closure to this event."

Young explained, "The issue here was having people acknowledge when they're involved in an accident they need to stop...It's critically important they stop and provide assistance and provide information as to what happened."

The agreement was reached after the judge on Friday denied a motion for dismissal by defense attorney John Paterson.

The accident occurred around midnight while the four motorcyclists were eastbound on Bay City Forestville Road near Obee Road in Minden Township. Kritzman was airlifted to a Saginaw hospital where he died.

In the judge's written opinion denying the dismissal motion, the prosecutor's allegations were outlined: "There were four motorcycles traveling together; that they had been together all evening, going as a group from bar to bar; they were heading from Argyle to Minden City to go to another bar; that the victim's motorcycle was traveling at an excessive speed at the time it slid off the pavement and back onto the pavement; that the victim lost control of the motorcycle and slid a considerable distance; that at some point he became separated from the motorcycle and his body slid diagonally across the path of at least one of the other motorcycles...believed...driven by Monica Tibbetts."

The prosecutor claimed Tibbitts lost control her motorcycle and that Lautner and VanSickle assisted her in lifting her motorcycle off the pavement, and "the three co-defendants...drove away from the scene before police officers had arrived and the three placed their motorcycles inside a neighbor's closed building... later went on to Minden City where they stayed at the bar and did not contact any police officers until several hours had passed."

The case was scheduled for trial on Jan. 23.