Autopsy: Woman killed in Finley crash was not pregnant

An autopsy Tuesday morning showed the Hermiston woman who died in a car crash Friday night in Finley was not pregnant.

Fawn J. White, 34, was the back seat passenger in a car that drove through a stop sign on East Bowles Road into the path of another car on Highway 397 at 11:20 p.m.

White was not wearing a seat belt at the time and was thrown from the 1999 Buick Regal.

Ty A. Moore was the driver of the Buick that also carried White’s 3-year-old son and Beatriz Garcia Medina, 22, of West Richland.

Moore, 31, allegedly was drunk at the time. He is being held in the Benton County jail without bail on suspicion of vehicular homicide and reckless endangerment of a child.

A document prepared by Washington State Patrol Trooper Brian Luedtke for Benton County District Court said the passenger who died was pregnant. A state patrol supervisor confirmed Monday that investigators had the same information.

An occupant of the Buick reportedly gave troopers that information.

Benton County Coroner John Hansens initially told the Herald an autopsy was not being performed, but that changed.

“We didn’t have all the information we needed and, once we put our heads together with the state patrol and everything, we decided it would be best to go ahead and do (an autopsy),” Hansens said Tuesday afternoon.

The autopsy was performed by Dr. Sig Menchel, a forensic pathologist from Bellevue.

Menchel concluded that the impact to White’s chest caused a tear in her aorta, or the body’s main artery.

This story was originally published October 27, 2015 at 5:57 PM with the headline "Autopsy: Woman killed in Finley crash was not pregnant."