12 months behind bars for fatal
2018 crash
JEMS Staff
KING GEORGE COUNTY, Virginia — WTVR reports that A former rescue squad employee will go to prison for a deadly ambulance crash in 2018.
A judge sentenced William Watson to a total of eight years for involuntary manslaughter, reckless driving, and failure to obey a traffic signal.
Seven years were suspended, so Watson will spend 12 months behind bars.
A whistleblower inside the Westmoreland rescue squad, as well as multiple witnesses, said that the ambulance had its lights on, but not the siren, when it entered the intersection.
Virginia law requires emergency vehicles to have both their lights and siren on, or else yield to traffic when they have a red light.
Watson had been with the department for one month at the time of the crash.