An Oak Harbor woman who was convicted of vehicular homicide in the deaths of three people and served a prison term is accused of stabbing a man to death in Seattle last month.
Jordyn Weichert, 35, was arrested on July 29 and charged in King County Superior Court with murder in the second degree, the Seattle Times reported. She is accused of killing 55-year-old Ramon Aragon-Garcia while the two were inside a parked van in the Sodo neighborhood on July 14.
A judge set Weichert’s bail at $5 million.
A Whidbey News-Times article about the vehicular homicide case helped police identify Weichert as the suspect, according to the Seattle Times.
The stabbing was reported by a passerby who flagged down a deputy with the King County Sheriff’s Office. Aragon-Garcia’s body was found inside. A bloody knife was found under his leg.
Investigators located surveillance video that showed a woman entering the van and then leaving about an hour later, the Seattle Times reported. She appeared to have blood on her chest and got into another car that drove away.
Police found the driver, who identified the woman by her first name. Another tipster identified her by the same name and reported that she had been convicted of vehicular homicide on Whidbey Island. Police Googled her and found a News-Times story about the case, which provided them with her full name.
According to the Seattle Times, a resident at an apartment complex where Weichert had recently stayed noticed that she had a knife wound near her collarbone after she returned from the van. When he asked her about it, she joked that “you should see the other guy.”
The police report doesn’t allude to a possible motive or what may have led to the stabbing inside the van.
In 2010, Weichert was driving friends in a Chevrolet Blazer on Highway 20 when she lost control after asking the the front-seat passenger, Samantha Bowling, to hold the wheel while she put on a sweater. The Blazer rolled over the top of an oncoming Subaru, killing the driver, 33-year-old Brian Wood, a well-known software developer from North Vancouver, B.C., and seriously injuring his pregnant wife, Erin Wood.
Two passengers in Weichert’s vehicle were also killed. They were 25-year-old Jacob Quistorf and 26-year-old Francis Malloy, both of Oak Harbor.
Bowling suffered a fractured hip. She later pleaded guilty to three counts of vehicular homicide for her part in the tragedy; she was sentenced to five years and one month in prison.
Weichert pleaded not guilty and went to trial. Toxicology results showed that she allegedly used heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana prior to the accident, but the judge ruled that the prosecutor didn’t prove the drugs were a cause of the collision.
The jury convicted her of three counts of vehicular homicide and two counts of vehicular assault. She was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2011. She later appealed but the state Court of Appeals upheld her conviction.