Wichita man sentenced in crash that killed two Starkey residents

A judge on Monday ordered the Wichita man convicted of killing two mentally disabled men in an alcohol- and drug-fueled crash last year to serve more than 60 years in prison.

Bret Blevins, 57, received the maximum sentence he could in connection with the May 6, 2016, collision that left 46-year-old Dirk MacMillan and 25-year-old Leonard “Dusty” Atterbery dead and injured others — including his own passenger.

The men, both residents of local mental-disability service provider Starkey Inc., were in a van with two Starkey staff members and another resident when it was broadsided by a Cadillac Escalade that ran a stop sign at Young and Newell at about 3:45 p.m.

Prosecutors contend it was Blevins who drove, crawled out of a window and fled after the crash, then refused to submit to drug and alcohol testing that showed he had meth in his system and a blood alcohol level 1.5 times the legal limit to drive in Kansas.

Blevins and his defense attorney, meanwhile, suggested the woman Blevins was riding with was behind the wheel.

MacMillan and Atterbery died in the hospital a few hours after the crash.

“My heart died the moment the doctor said his heart had stopped beating,” Atterbery’s adoptive mother, Kay Atterbery, said in a letter read Monday in court by a DUI Impact Center victim advocate.

“This was not an accident. It was an annihilation. … Their poor bodies were destroyed,” said MacMillan’s sister, Jennifer, calling for the most-severe punishment the judge could impose for the 14 counts, including second-degree reckless murder, a jury convicted Blevins of last month.

The men hurt and killed “were children, even though they lived in men’s bodies,” Lesley Davis, another sister of MacMillan’s, said in court.

“I hope that Blevins never gets to see freedom again,” she said.

Blevins’ defense attorney, Carl Maughan, asked the judge to order probation with an intensive substance abuse treatment program, or a prison term no longer than 154 months.

“These were reckless acts. (But) they were not intentional with no ill will behind them,” he said before Blevins offered a brief apology.

In the end, Sedgwick County District Judge Ben Burgess handed down the longest sentence: 728 months in prison. He also ordered Blevins to serve six months in jail for a misdemeanor conviction related to the crash.

This story was originally published June 19, 2017 at 4:09 PM with the headline "Wichita man sentenced in crash that killed two Starkey residents."