Man gets jail for vehicular assault

A Langley man was sentenced to jail for driving intoxicated and seriously injuring a passenger.

A Langley man was sentenced to jail for driving intoxicated, crashing a car into road construction machinery and seriously injuring a passenger.

Azamat B. Kurmangali pleaded guilty in Island County Superior Court Jan. 7 to vehicular assault. He pleaded guilty to the “DUI prong” of the charge.

The judge sentenced him to six months in jail, which was the recommendation worked out by the defense and prosecution as part of a plea bargain.

A trooper with the Washington State Patrol investigated the one-car accident, which occurred early in the morning of June 19 on East Harbor Road.

The trooper wrote that Kurmangali drove a Toyota sedan into a construction zone marked with signs and blocked with barriers. The car collided with an excavator that was parked well off the roadway.

The passenger in the back seat, Joshua Jesson of Freeland, suffered a leg fracture with a bone protruding from the skin that caused heavy blood loss, the trooper’s report states. A deputy with the Island County Sheriff’s Office arrived at the scene of the crash, extracted Jesson from the car and applied a tourniquet.

Doctors later ascertained that Jesson suffered a broken tibia and fibula and had a spot on his lung caused by the crash, the report states.

The report indicates that neither Kurmangali nor another passenger were injured. Officers found an empty bottle of Proper Twelve Irish whiskey on the ground next to the car.

Kurmangali, who was stumbling around the scene, had slurred speech and watery eyes; he admitted to drinking rum and whiskey earlier, the report states.