Woman fined $632 in Topaz Ranch fatal

A Wellington woman pleaded no contest to one count of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in a fatal May collision in Topaz Ranch Estates.

Windie Lee Atchison, 33, paid a $632 fine after a charge of driving without due care was dropped in a plea agreement.

Atchison was driving a Ford F350 that rammed into the rear of a Ford Taurus driven by 90-year-old Darrell David Daugherty as he was turning onto Albite Road from Highway 208. The rear of Daugherty's Taurus was obliterated in the collision.

Daugherty's daughter, Sharon Bushnell and her husband were in court for the hearing but were not called on to give a victim impact statement before sentencing.

Bushnell said they were told by the district attorney's office they would be called on to speak at the hearing. Prosecutor Mike McCormick said he didn't know the Bushnells were in the gallery.

Atchison and her passenger originally claimed that Daugherty pulled out in front of her from Albite.

However, witnesses to the accident came forward and Bushnell provided investigators with information that he was turning left into the south county subdivision when he was killed.

Atchison later told Nevada Highway Patrol troopers that one minute the way was clear and the next she saw Daugherty's vehicle just in front of her.

Daugherty lived at Lake Tahoe before he moved to Topaz Ranch Estates in the 1970s. His wife died about six years ago, which is when his daughter and her husband moved to Gardnerville to be close to him.