Woman who drove into playground sentenced

A woman with a long history of drunk driving who nearly struck children playing in a Columbia Falls playground was sentenced to 10 years with the Department of Corrections last week in Flathead County District Court.

On June 11 Debbie Rae Paszek, 55, drove her Ford Escape at a high rate of speed down Diane Road shortly after 6 p.m. and crashed through the fence at Horine Park. One neighbor said that kids were playing on the playground at the time of the incident and she narrowly missed hitting them.

She then backed up, drove through the west end neighborhood and went down South Hilltop Road where she crashed her car at the Sapa corner, where she was arrested.

Paszek has had multiple DUI and other charges throughout her life.

On Thursday, district court judge Robert Allison adhered to a plea bargain that gave her five years with the Department of Corrections for felony DUI and five years for felony criminal mischief in this latest incident. The sentences are to run consecutively. She was given 129 days credit for time served.

Allison agreed to drop nearly $6,000 in fines, though Paszek is required to pay the City of Columbia Falls $998 in restitution for the damage she did to the fence at Horine Park.

Paszek told Allison she was sorry for what she’d done.

“I would like to apologize to you, the community and the victims,” she said. Paszek has five children of her own — two of them are minors.

She said she’s tried to stay sober, going to classes and Alcoholics Anonymous. Now she has an AA sponsor and feels like she’s on the right track — her sponsor was in the courtroom.

Paszek noted she worked for the Department of Motor vehicles for 10 years at one point in her career, giving licenses back to people who had lost them.

Paszek’s sentence doesn’t necessarily mean prison time, she could end up in a secure treatment facility.

Her first DUI arrest came in her home state of Nevada in 2005, but she made headlines in the Flathead Valley in 2006 when she severely injured herself and two 3-year-old children in a collision with a logging truck while driving drunk west of Kalispell.

According to an article in the Daily Inter Lake from Feb. 2, 2006, a sport utility vehicle driven by Paszek collided with an unloaded logging truck at the intersection of West Springcreek Road and Meadow Hills Drive. The story noted that Paszek was northbound in the wrong lane as the truck crested a hill, saw Paszek’s vehicle and tried to stop. Paszek, who was not wearing a seat belt, suffered serious wounds, including chest injuries and a broken leg. Two 3-year-old girls with her reportedly shared one seat belt and were also hurt.

Paszek was originally charged with two counts of negligent vehicular assault, criminal endangerment and DUI for the 2006 incident, but in a plea deal, plead guilty to only one charge of vehicular assault and DUI. In March 2007 she was sentenced to a 10-year suspended sentence with the Montana Department of Corrections for the vehicular assault and a 1-year suspended sentence in the Flathead County Jail for the DUI.

Less than three months later, in June 2007, the state filed to revoke the suspended sentences after she “violated the conditions of her suspended sentence in a number of respects.” According to court documents, Paszek violated the conditions of her probation by attempting to deceive her supervising officer, consuming intoxicants and also failed to submit to alcohol testing.

Paszek was allowed to attend the Montana Chemical Dependency Center and her sentence was kept the same at a hearing on Oct. 11, 2007.

Less than two weeks later, Paszek was again arrested for DUI, her fourth.

Paszek was back in court in 2015, when she again was charged with DUI in May of that year. Paszek once again pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a five-year concurrent sentence with the one she was already serving for violating her probation and an addition 13 months for the new DUI with an additional three years suspended.