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| Two women shot by parolee sue state |
| By Seattle Times |
| Published: 07/25/2005 |
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A lawsuit filed last week on behalf of two Utah women who were shot and wounded by a man who had recently been released from a Washington state prison claims the state failed to adequately supervise the former inmate. The suit, filed in Thurston County Superior Court, alleges that the state Department of Corrections (DOC) failed to provide even minimal supervision for Richard Hesper Wilson, 39, even though the agency determined he required a high level of oversight. "These people were victims of brutal crimes at the hands of a high-risk, repeat offender," said Tony Shapiro, who filed the suit on behalf of Kimberli Lingard and Diana "Dee" Jensen, whom Wilson wounded June 9, 2004. Wilson later took his own life. The state Attorney General's Office, which defends the state in legal matters, did not comment on the lawsuit yesterday. According to the complaint, the DOC knew when Wilson was released in February 2004 that he was a drug user who previously had tried to evade DOC supervision and was a high risk to reoffend. The lawsuit claims Wilson's community correction's officer had contact with him four times in March, saw him once in April and did not have contact with him at all in May. According to the lawsuit, Lingard and Jensen were the last victims of a 24-day crime spree that included robbery, rape and murder and took Wilson from Washington, through Idaho to Utah. His rampage ended when he killed himself in the middle of a freeway after a police chase near the Utah-Nevada border. According to the lawsuit, Wilson served three sentences in Washington state prisons between 1996 and 2004 for convictions that include robbery, theft and the rape of a woman at knifepoint. After his release, Wilson committed a number of burglaries in Washington beginning in May 17 and on June 4 raped a woman in Goldendale, Klickitat County, according to the suit. On June 8, he killed a 17-year-old girl in Mountain Home, Idaho, the suit alleges. On June 9, he shot then-17-year-old Lingard at a Laundromat in Grantsville, Utah, and a few hours later shot Jensen, a clerk at a gas station in Delle, 70 miles east of the Utah-Nevada border. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and the recoupment of medical costs. The Wilson case is among the most recent in a line of lawsuits alleging that officials in Washington have failed to properly supervise released criminals. |
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