Despite repeated driving violations – including killing someone – Bend man got his license back. Then he crashed again.

Published 6:30 pm Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Kalan Roberts was speeding down U.S. Highway 97 in a pickup truck at over 100 mph, jostling with another car in a rage-driven race in Bend in April 2021.

He was headed straight for disaster: a multicar wreck in which four people suffered serious injuries, some of them life threatening. Roberts, 34, was sentenced earlier this month to more than five years in prison for his actions, but the crash wasn’t the first time he had driven into trouble.

Nor was it the most serious.

In 2005, Roberts, at 16, pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and other charges in a drunken driving crash near Tumalo that killed his friend, Hegner Durantes, 20. A Deschutes County judge ordered his release from a juvenile detention facility halfway through a five-year sentence. Less than a year later, in 2009, he pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of intoxicants, recklessly endangering another, felony driving while suspended, resisting arrest and escape.

Then, in 2017, Roberts pleaded guilty to driving with a suspended license. By then, his driver’s license had already been suspended and revoked for his previous offenses. Despite that history, a Deschutes County judge in the new case ordered that his license be suspended — for a year, according to court records.

That’s how Roberts successfully applied to the Oregon DMV to have his license reinstated in 2018. And that’s how Roberts found himself driving legally about 11 p.m. on April 16, 2021.

The system that repeatedly failed to stop him from getting back on the road has sparked outrage among advocates for safe driving.

“This is somebody who should not have had a driver’s license,” said Cate Duke, Oregon’s programs manager for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She added, “This is somebody who has repeatedly broken the law and proven that they are not willing or capable of obeying the laws that we are all supposed to obey.”

Descriptions of the 2021 crash, contained in court documents, are frightening.

Witnesses said Roberts blocked a Subaru driver from merging into his lane on Highway 97, then brake-checked him, according to court records. Enraged at each other, the two began racing and maneuvering recklessly. Roberts nearly side-swiped another driver.

The driver racing Roberts then slammed into the back of a Jeep that carried four people, sending it spinning into a concrete wall. As the Subaru flipped and rolled, Roberts’ truck smashed into it, leaving tire marks on the side of the car.

One person in the Jeep flew through its windshield and landed on the hood. The scalp of another passenger was peeled back and his femur shattered. There were broken ribs, a broken back and a broken jaw.

“That all four victims survived is miraculous,” Deschutes County Deputy District Attorney Joseph Langerman said in court filings that described the crash.

According to court records, Roberts did not stick around to help the bleeding victims. Instead, Roberts “fled the scene without rendering aid or exchanging information with anyone.”

Roberts pleaded guilty on Dec. 12 to felony charges stemming from the crash, including fourth-degree assault and failing to help injured people.

“He should not have been driving, but he was legally entitled to have a driver’s license,” said Deschutes County District Attorney Steve Gunnels, who added: “the fact that he had his driving license restored, given his criminal history, is unusual.”

Under state law, the Oregon DMV will revoke a person’s license for five years if that person is convicted of any combination of three or more driving-related offenses over a five-year period.

For individual charges, the grounds and length of a suspension or revocation varies depending on the charge. A person whose license is permanently revoked can request a hearing to restore driving privileges after 10 years.

Today, a person convicted of criminally negligent homicide would have a driver’s license permanently revoked, per state law, according to lawyers and an Oregon DMV guide for suspensions and revocations. But in Roberts’ case, his previous criminal history — which includes criminally negligent homicide — didn’t matter when he asked to get his license restored, Gunnels and other lawyers say.

Oregon DMV officials confirmed that when Roberts applied to have his license reinstated in 2018, he was eligible to have it back under state law.

That’s because the 13-year period for which his license was revoked after the 2005 homicide conviction ended on July 20, 2017, the state said. The maximum suspension for driving with a suspended license in 2017 was one year, which ended on June 25, 2018. From there, he was eligible to drive.

In email correspondence obtained by The Bulletin, Ryan Stone, the impaired driving program manager with Oregon DMV, acknowledged that Roberts “has demonstrated a habitual and unrelenting pattern of unlawful activity involving the use of a motor vehicle.”

The department had no choice in 2018, Stone said, noting “it appears DMV was stuck granting reinstatement.”

In an interview, Gunnels made his stance clear: “I think habitual traffic offenders who injure people should lose their driving privileges. Period.”

Duke voiced outrage over Roberts’ repeated driving offenses and the fact he was able to get his license back. She believes that a person who shows a propensity to disregard the law and the safety of others should not be allowed to have a license reinstated.

“You’re basically trusting somebody who has already proven that they’re untrustworthy,” Duke said, adding: “When you are behind the wheel of a car, you are driving a weapon.”Motor vehicle crashes in Deschutes County’s two largest cities — Bend and Redmond — have increased for three consecutive years, according to emergency services data obtained by The Bulletin.

Total calls for these crashes increased nearly 24.5% from 2020 to 2022, from 613 to 763. In Bend, 32 of those crashes in 2022 involved drunken drivers, up from 24 the previous year, The Bulletin has previously reported.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, has sponsored Senate Bill 670, which would lower the length of time for a person to request a hearing to restore driving privileges from 10 years to three.

If passed, it would also require a person who gets driving privileges back to install an ignition interlock device — a breath alcohol analyzer connected to the ignition system of a vehicle — for 10 years. The bill will be reviewed by the Senate Committee on Judiciary at a later date, according to the committee’s schedule.

In Roberts’ case, when he is released, his license will be suspended for five years, according to the Deschutes County District Attorney’s Office. After that, Gunnels said, he can apply to have his license reinstated.