Driver Sentenced To 12 Years For Crash That Killed Alice Yuan

Littleton CO

21 January, 2021

2:48 PM

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ARAPAHOE COUNTY, CO — A woman was sentenced to 12 years in prison for vehicular homicide in the death of Alice Yuan, the 18th Judicial District Attorney's Office announced Thursday. On Feb. 16, 2020, Cayla Cushman was driving while she was high on methamphetamine when she struck and killed Yuan in Columbine Valley, the 18th Judicial DA said. Yuan was driving home from working a 10-hour shift at her restaurant job, when Cushman drove her truck over the yellow line on South Platte Canyon Road into oncoming traffic and crashed head on into Yuan's car, prosecutors said. Yuan, a 60-year-old mother and grandmother, was pronounced dead soon after. In a statement from Cushman's sentencing hearing, one of Yuan's daughters said her family "lost a mom, a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt and a grandmother to six grandchildren." "She only stood 5 feet tall, yet she carried so much on her shoulders and did all this with a smile and a laugh." Yuan's family urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence for Cushman, who had been convicted of drunken driving in two previous cases, the DA's office said. "Our father has been disabled for many years now, and our mother was by his side every day," another daughter said in a statement read by Senior Deputy District Attorney Megan Brewer. "The fact that the defendant was acting selfishly and decided to speed down a small street that is only 35 mph while under the influence and having been convicted twice prior upsets and infuriates me. My mother did not deserve to die." Cushman's previous convictions, and probation and substance abuse treatment, had failed to change her behavior, Brewer said. "We don't know the real number of times this defendant has driven while under the influence, but we know she has been convicted twice," Brewer said in her sentencing argument. "And this time she was under an interlock device, under the influence of meth, and she still chose to drive that night." Cushman was sentenced by Arapahoe County District Court Judge Darren Vahle, who gave her the maximum sentence allowed under the plea agreement. "Whether you had a gun and killed someone or drove your car drunk and killed someone, a family is destroyed. The devastation you brought is overwhelming," Vahle said. "You had no right to drive, you had been using an illegal substance, yet you got behind the wheel, and that caused a death … it was your choices and your decisions."