PIERCE COUNTY, Wash. — A Pierce County SWAT team has arrested a 32-year-old man believed to be responsible for a hit-and-run collision that killed one 12-year-old girl and injured another on Jan. 15 in the Midland area.
Officers arrested Terry Matthew James Kohl at 5:43 a.m. Wednesday after police surrounded his home and called for him to come out. He surrendered peacefully.
A second suspect, J. Michael Hutchins, 33, was arrested Thursday afternoon after a deputy spotted the car that was used to pick up Kohl shortly after the girls were struck.
That car fled from the deputy, hit a semi-truck and a pole.
Hutchins was transported to a hospital and will be booked in a Pierce County jail for burglary in the second degree, possession of stolen property and rendering criminal assistance.
Immaculee Goldade was killed instantly, and her friend, Kathleen Olson, survived the crash but was badly injured. The two were walking on 104th Street East near 24th Avenue east in the Midland area of unincorporated Pierce County when they were hit.
A few days later, Pierce County investigators released photos of a person of interest in the case. Deputies say that man stopped at a convenience store off Canyon Road in a stolen truck and took off shortly after.
Pierce County traffic investigators, detectives and deputies were able to link Kohl to the burglary of a business where the truck that hit the girls, — a white flatbed — was stolen, and identify him as the driver of the truck at the time the girls were hit.
Kohl was booked into the Pierce County Jail for investigation of vehicular homicide, vehicular assault, felony hit-and-run death, hit-and-run injury, possession of stolen property, unlawful possession of a firearm, and second-degree burglary.
Kohl was arraigned Thursday and bail was set at $1 million.