Accident or assault? Jury reaches verdict in case of driver who hit Tacoma protester
A woman who was seriously hurt in Tacoma last year when she was hit by a driver going by a protest outside The LeMay - America’s Car Museum was the victim of an accident, a jury found Tuesday.
Stephen Tadla was acquitted of first-degree assault in a jury trial in Pierce County Superior Court. Jurors found him guilty of failure to remain at an injury accident, a class C felony. His attorney, Mark Treyz, told The News Tribune that Tadla admitted wrongdoing on that matter and that they did not contest the charge.
He is to be sentenced July 7 before Judge Edmund Murphy. Treyz said his client is facing a sentencing range of three to nine months in county jail. According to court records, Tadla, 35, does not have any prior criminal history.
The woman Tadla struck, Theresa Evans, suffered a shattered pelvis, a concussion and head lacerations that required staples as a result of the collision. She underwent multiple surgeries at Harborview Medical Center. The evening it happened, Jan. 26, 2022, a crowd of people was outside the car museum to protest for the rights of people experiencing homelessness while city and county government officials spoke inside about crime and safety with business owners and residents.
Evans, who lives nearby in Eastside Tacoma, said she planned to walk there and spend 15 minutes at the protest before a virtual math tutoring appointment. A witness previously told The News Tribune that Evans was there for less than two minutes before he heard the sound of an accelerating engine and saw headlights. Tadla, driving a light blue pickup truck, knocked Evans to the ground, and people came to her aid. A KIRO 7 News photographer captured video of the truck driving away.
In court filings, Tadla’s attorney said the collision was an accident. The man was headed south on East D Street, driving home from getting food at a Jack in the Box, according to a trial brief. His lawyer wrote that when Tadla got to a curve in the road, his food and drink started to spill and he reached for it, causing his vehicle to swerve and hit the woman on the sidewalk.
A pickup truck drove onto the sidewalk and struck a woman at a protest in #Tacoma, right in front of me and dozens of others, then drove off. I was able to catch the vehicle driving away on video. @KIRO7Seattle pic.twitter.com/2r7G5ZDm1C
— Jonathan Simmons (@JSimmonsTVNews) January 27, 2022
Tadla noticed people were by the road, according to his lawyer, but he didn’t know why they were there. The lawyer wrote that Tadla acknowledged he was driving too fast and had been inattentive to his surroundings.
Woman who was hit disappointed by verdict
In a phone call Wednesday, Evans said she was a little disappointed in the outcome of the trial, and she doesn’t believe that Tadla accidentally hit her. She said she’s lived in Tacoma for 23 years, and she’s never seen an accident on that portion of road.
“The possibility, the percentage of that actually being an accident and that actually happening, is frankly nearly zero,” Evans said of Tadla’s story.
The woman said she thought Tadla didn’t mean to hurt her as badly as he did. Evans attended most of the trial, and she said when Tadla testified, he claimed he lost control of his vehicle near the bus stop on D Street. Evans said that would have been about 250 feet from where she was standing, and she didn’t think a driver who spilled a little food that far away would hit someone.
“I don’t think me being struck was an accident,” Evans said. “I believe me being harmed to that level was the accident. I wasn’t supposed to be struck that hard. I wasn’t supposed to hit his windshield. I wasn’t supposed to be lying on the ground and have to spend 50 days in the hospital. That part was the quote unquote accident.”
Driver fled to Oregon after collision at protest
After the collision, prosecutors said Tadla sold the truck he’d been driving, relinquished his Washington driver’s license and got an Oregon license. In court filings, his defense attorney said Tadla had been in the process of moving to Bend, Oregon, and had plans to leave the Friday after the incident. Instead, the lawyer said Tadla drove to Bend the same night.
“Upon reading the news of the incident and seeing all the hostility and anger directed at him online, he became even more frightened and anxious, and made the poor decision to remain in Bend and not notify the authorities of his involvement in the incident. He told no one, not even his girlfriend, with whom he was living, what had occurred,” Treyz wrote.
Tadla’s attitudes toward homelessness were raised during the case.
Tadla has made videos about homeless encampments in Tacoma, and the content of his social media accounts was the subject of motions from the defense and prosecutors. The defense made motions to exclude it from trial, but the state argued that at least one video from his YouTube channel was relevant, titled, “Walking Through Tacoma’s Infamous Tent City - Homelessness Crisis - Drug Abuse - Tweaker Hunting”
The video shows Tadla walking through an encampment and talking with people. Prosecutors said his disdain for the homeless is obvious. The thumbnail for the clip states, “you can smell this video.”
Tadla’s YouTube channel includes a variety of content posted over the course of years, including motorcycle videos, various product reviews, one-on-one interviews and vlogs. In one, he hands out a wheelbarrow-full of beer to people at an encampment.
The defense moved to admit one 15-minute video interview of a man who detailed his living situation and how he became homeless. Prosecutors argued it wasn’t relevant and wrote that they believed the defense wanted to admit it to rebut the content of Tadla’s “tent city” video.
