Fred Russell, convicted of killing three WSU students, released from prison Tue., April 14, 2015

Staff and wire reports

PULLMAN, Wash. (AP) — Frederick Russell, convicted of killing three Washington State University students and injuring four others in an auto crash, has been released from prison. Russell served seven years of his 14-year sentence. Russell, who’s now 36, was released from Larch Corrections Center Tuesday and will spend the next 18 months under the supervision of the California Department of Corrections. He was speeding along State Route 270 between Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman on June 4, 2001, when he attempted to pass another vehicle. His vehicle collided with the car, lost control and collided with a second car. He was legally drunk at the time of the crash; he’d bought a 1.5 liter bottle of vodka, drank it at a house party that night and then had about two Guinness beers at a local bar before getting behind the wheel of his Chevy Blazer. Killed were WSU students Stacy Morrow, Ryan Sorensen and Brandon Clements. Russell, then 22, was convicted in 2007 of vehicular homicide and vehicular assault. His conviction came six years after the collision because he fled to Ireland before trial. Russell disappeared three days before he was scheduled for a pretrial hearing. He led authorities on a global chase that landed him on the U.S. Marshals Service’s “Most Wanted List” before the agency received a tip in January 2005 that Russell was in Dublin, Ireland. Russell, who had been using the alias David Carroll, had been working as a security guard at a boutique. Bernadette Olson, who was a graduate student at the time of the crash and a Russell family friend, received a six-month jail term in 2004 for lying to federal prosecutors after she drove Fred Russell to Canada to escape the vehicular homicide charges. At the time of the crash Russell’s father, Gregory D. Russell, was director of the criminal justice program at Washington State University.

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