BAKER CITY, Oregon -- A Baker City man was arrested early Saturday morning by Baker County Sheriff's Office on a warrant stemming from a May 28 fatal traffic crash.
Derrick A. Coates, 24, was taken into custody around midnight by BCSO deputies after they responded to a complaint call. Coates was booked into the Baker County Jail on a felony warrant charging Manslaughter in the Second Degree and Assault in the Third Degree after a Baker County grand jury indicted him and a warrant was issued for his arrest July 20, 2012.
The charges are the result of an OSP investigation into a May 28 crash involving a pickup driven by Coates and a group of motorcycles on Highway 7 near milepost 40.
Leta Louise Currey, 46, from Pendleton, was pronounced dead at the scene. The operator of a second motorcycle, Joanne Mohrland, 53, from Walla Walla, Washington, was critically injured. Mohrland has since been released from the hospital and is continuing to recover from her injuries.
