The King County Superior Court sentenced a woman on July 12 who was charged with possessing a vehicle stolen out of The Landing in Renton — and crashing and killing her passenger — in December 2022.
Destiny Rose Sweeney, 27, pleaded guilty on June 20, accepting a prosecutorial plea deal to two felony counts including vehicular homicide and a felony DUI, in addition to a misdemeanor count of vehicle prowling in the second degree. The court dismissed a second misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed pistol with no license.
According to prosecutorial documents, Sweeney was driving an SUV stolen out of Renton with her boyfriend, 43-year-old Jose Angel Contreras, in the front passenger seat and a dog in the rear seat. Sweeney crashed into an excavator in a construction zone in Burien on Dec. 14, 2022. Contreras suffered life-threatening injuries, including head trauma, as a result of the collision, with no evidence he wore a seatbelt at the time of the crash, according to a documents.
Contreras died at Harborview Medical Center on Jan. 8 as a result of injuries suffered in the crash.
According to documents, a man reported the vehicle Sweeney crashed, a Hyundai SUV, as stolen four days prior to the crash on Dec. 10, 2022, after his family returned from watching movies at The Landing to find the vehicle missing from the parking garage and broken glass on the cement.
According to documents, prior to striking the excavator, the vehicle veered across a shared turn lane and two lanes of oncoming traffic into the closed construction zone.
First responders located Contreras trapped in the vehicle and extricated him, as police found Sweeney injured, with a small gray pitbull, on a shoulder of the roadway in the area.
Law enforcement discovered suspected fentanyl pills, suspected methamphetamine, and smoking materials at the scene of the collision, in addition to a stolen 9mm handgun on Sweeney.
Judge Brian McDonald, overseeing Sweeney’s July 12 sentencing hearing, sentenced her to four years and six months in prison for the vehicular homicide conviction, to run concurrently with a sentence of three years and seven months for the felony DUI conviction; a sentence of 364 days for misdemeanor vehicle prowling; and the sentences of Sweeney’s four additional King County cases. The four additional cases include two cases of taking a vehicle without permission, an organized retail theft case, and a burglary case.
Sweeney’s sentence included an additional two years of community custody following confinement.
Families of both Sweeney and Contreras attended her sentencing hearing.
In a police interview with Sweeney following the crash, she stated prior to the collision, Contreras had punched her in the face in the midst of an argument, resulting in her driving into the excavator.
In her plea statement, Sweeney stated she pleaded guilty to the felony DUI charge with knowledge of a lack of factual basis for the charge.
“I agree there is a factual basis for vehicular homicide … since I drove impaired from drugs and crashed causing Jose’s death,” she stated in her plea.
