CHEROKEE GARTH LINCOLN - 17 yo (2009) -Tumwater (S of Olympia) WA

A 67-year-old Tumwater woman has been
arrested and charged with manslaughter, after authorities say she
supplied alcohol to a 17-year-old boy who died in her apartment.Roxanne
Johnson fled Thursday night after a warrant was issued for her arrest;
she was captured on Friday.According to court documents,
17-year-old Cherokee Garth Lincoln was found dead in Johnson's apartment
on Israel Road in Tumwater back in August after a night of heavy
drinking.Johnson told investigators she stayed up late drinking
and playing cards with Lincoln and four other teenage boys, including
one that was just 15 years old.The court documents say Johnson
told officers, "The kids are all homeless and needed someone to watch
out for them."She said she and the other boys put Lincoln to bed,
and when they checked on him around 3:30 a.m. he was sleeping.Hours
later, Johnson said, they woke up and found him dead."Sometimes
kids trust the adults to make the right decisions for them and
unfortunately in this case, that's not what happened," said Jen Kolb of
the Tumwater Police Department.Investigators reported that when
Lincoln died his blood-alcohol level was 0.36, almost five times the
legal limit. Johnson’s cousin, Verree Parks, was asked "Do you think she was supplying
alcohol to them?”"I think the kid was already loaded when he
came," Parks said.Parks claims Johnson wasn't even in the room
where the kids were drinking and says all she ever wanted to do was help
troubled teens, not hurt them."I think she was just trying to be
as helpful as she could and she always liked kids," Parks said.Johnson's
bail has been set at $1 million and she is expected to appear in court
on Monday.

67-year-old Tumwater woman sentenced in teen’s alcohol death
OLYMPIA – A Tumwater woman pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 27 months in prison Tuesday for providing liquor to a 17-year-old boy who died in her home last year due to complications from acute intoxication.
Roxanne Johnson, 67, did not address the court during her plea and sentencing hearing before Thurston County Superior Court Judge Carol Murphy. On the morning of Aug. 21, 2009, Cherokee Lincoln, 17, was found dead at Johnson’s Israel Road apartment. Johnson told Tumwater detectives that the night before, Lincoln had appeared to be in a “drunken stupor” while he and a group of teens were at the apartment, “drinking and playing cards,” court papers state.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Bruneau told Murphy before sentencing that during Johnson’s interactions with law enforcement and court officials after Lincoln’s death, they were all struck by her “singular lack of remorse.” Bruneau also said Johnson had a history of taking in underage boys and “plying them with alcohol.”

Lincoln’s mother, Minnie Shultz, who tearfully addressed the court during Tuesday’s sentencing, also commented on Johnson’s apparent lack of remorse. Shultz showed Murphy a picture of her son and described the anguish she felt on the day a Tumwater police officer arrived at her home to break the news of her son’s death.

“The knock at the door is one that every mother lives in fear of, and one that every mother prays will never come,” she said. Shultz said she deeply misses her son, and described him as an ordinary teen who had his share of troubles but was “full of hopes and dreams” for the future. She also described him as “a prankster with an infectious smile.”

Shultz said Johnson had a moral responsibility not to have provided her son with the alcohol that caused his death.

“You did not purposefully cause his death, but you did nothing to prevent it,” she said, addressing Johnson directly.

Shultz also described seeing her son for the last time when he was in the morgue. “When I touched his cheek to tell him goodbye, he was ice cold,” she said.

Johnson has been in custody at the Thurston County Jail since September, when she violated the conditions of her release after a urinalysis test returned positive for alcohol.

As part of a plea deal, Johnson pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of second-degree manslaughter in exchange for prosecutors substituting the second-degree manslaughter charge for her original charge of first-degree manslaughter. According to Washington state law, a person is guilty of first-degree manslaughter when he or she “recklessly causes the death of another person.” A person is guilty of second-degree manslaughter when he or she causes the death of another person due to “criminal negligence.”

First-degree manslaughter is a class A felony; second-degree manslaughter is a class B felony.

Johnson had no prior criminal history. With Johnson’s offender score of zero under the state’s standard sentencing range, she was eligible for a maximum sentence of 27 months in prison for the crime of second-degree manslaughter. After Johnson’s release from prison, she will spend 36 months under the state Department of Corrections’ “community custody” supervision.

Tumwater police detective Jen Kolb has said that Johnson provided liquor to a group of young people drinking in her home. In addition to Lincoln, a 15-year-old, an 18-year-old and a 23-year-old were drinking in the apartment that night, court papers state. Johnson told police that at some point during the night, someone escorted Lincoln to a bedroom while the group continued to play cards.

“According to the defendant, she checked on Lincoln at 3 a.m. where (she) found him on the floor,” court papers state. “She covered him with a blanket and went to bed.”

When medics arrived at the apartment, Lincoln was face down on the carpet. It appeared to the medics that Lincoln “had suffocated from the position he was in or from aspirating vomit … alcohol was possibly a factor,” court papers state. A toxicology exam later revealed that Lincoln had a blood-alcohol level of 0.36 percent – more than four times the legal limit for driving while intoxicated.

Lincoln died of “positional asphyxia secondary of acute ethanol intoxication,” according to Thurston County Coroner Gary Warnock.

A Tumwater police officer at the scene of Lincoln’s death noticed “two nearly empty half-gallon bottles of alcohol” in the apartment.

The card players told police that they checked on Lincoln at 3:30 a.m., “and he was reportedly fine, sleeping and breathing, although he had slid off of the mattress and was on the floor.”

Outside court Tuesday, Shultz said she could not stress enough the moral responsibility that adults have to protect vulnerable juveniles. She added that her son was not homeless at the time of his death, but she agreed with Kolb’s earlier assessment that he was a “wayward youth.”