Opinion ID: 1318416
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Bremerton v. Burkhart

Text: At about 11:30 p.m. on March 27, 1983, a car towing a small trailer failed to negotiate a corner and went over an embankment. Moments after hearing the noise of the accident, a witness observed a bystander helping a woman with a small child out of the passenger side of the car and up the embankment to the street. The bystander returned to the car and helped another woman up the embankment. When Officer Johnson arrived at the scene of the accident shortly thereafter, there was no one near the car. He determined that Sherrie Burkhart was the registered owner of the car. Burkhart was contacted at her residence and brought back to the accident scene, where she then admitted that she had been driving the car at the time of the accident. Earlier in the evening Burkhart had dropped off her boyfriend, Mark Sarber, at their residence and had driven off with their small child and Sarber's sister, who had only been in Bremerton for a week and was relatively unfamiliar with the city. Burkhart returned to the house later that evening on foot carrying their child. She was crying and told Sarber that she had been in a wreck. The accident had occurred two blocks from the house.