Teen Cries Out During Sentencing — 𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐌𝐨𝐦 & 𝟑 𝐊𝐢𝐝𝐬, Then Begs Judge for Mercy | HO

Andrea’s Tuesday looked like minivan life—six kids, seatbelts, chatter, the ordinary chaos she’d built her love around. She stopped at the red light, because that’s what you do when you have children in the back and a life waiting at home. And then the Audi entered the intersection at 112 mph and struck the van broadside at full speed.

Witnesses would later say he’d been weaving in and out of traffic, using the center lane to pass like lanes were suggestions. The collision was so violent it pushed the van into two other cars before it rolled onto its side. It spun, flipped, and wrapped around a pole with the kind of force that makes first responders go quiet.

Andrea Hudson was gone instantly. So were 12-year-old Boyd “Buster” Brown, and sisters Matilda Wilcox, 13, and Eloise Wilcoxen, 12. Two of Andrea’s surviving children, Nolan and Charlotte, were pulled from what was left and taken to the hospital with catastrophic injuries—brain trauma, broken bones, and the kind of damage that isn’t a chapter you close.

Nolan would face a compromised immune system and limited range of motion for life. Charlotte would live with the impacts of a severe traumatic brain injury for life. Responders described the scene as the worst they’d ever seen. Chase walked away with scratches.

If you’ve ever stood at a red light and glanced at your kid in the rearview mirror, you already understand why the courtroom would later feel too small to hold what happened at 140th and 192nd. “Warm Tuesday” became, for multiple families, a word that tasted like metal. “Red light” became a sound.

And then the story shifted from sirens to paperwork, from the intersection to the courthouse, from one second to months of grief measured in calendar pages and medical bills and silence.

April 2025, King County Superior Court: Chase pleaded guilty to four counts of vehicular homicide and two counts of vehicular assault. No trial. Straight to sentencing. The facts didn’t need debate; the data already told the truth. The Audi’s crash report said full throttle. It said zero braking. It said he didn’t even try to slow down.

The hinged sentence here is the one that makes people angry because it’s true: a guilty plea can end a trial, but it can’t end what families replay when they try to sleep.

The families spoke, and the room changed. Andrea’s husband, Abe Hudson, stood up and held his grief like a weight he had no choice but to carry in public.

“On March 19th, our world and the dream that we had created was shattered in an instant,” he said, voice straining against tears. He described the pain and fear that still lived in their home every day, and the way the month afterward became “worse than any nightmare” he could’ve imagined. He talked about his children’s heartbreak at losing their mother—the kind of heartbreak that doesn’t fit into a single statement, only into a life.

Buster’s father spoke next, and his words didn’t sound like a courtroom speech; they sounded like a man trying to translate a permanent wound into language other adults could recognize.

“I am and always have been a pretty cheerful and optimistic person,” he said, then paused as if he hated what he was about to admit. “The events on March 19th, 2024 have introduced a new word into my regular life and that’s hate. I hate Tuesdays. The crash happened on a Tuesday. I hate the 19th of every month, regardless of what day of the week it is. I absolutely hate coming home from work and finding my wife alone in the bedroom, looking at pictures and crying for her lost son.”

In the courtroom, a tribute video played—photos that proved these weren’t “victims” in the abstract, but kids who had faces and inside jokes and favorite songs, a mom who was “effortlessly bold” and “hilariously authentic,” as one letter described, “the coolest person ever.” People cried who had never met them. That’s what a real loss does: it forces strangers to imagine the shape of an absence.

Andrea’s mother spoke too, her grief threaded with something sharper—history. Court records showed this was Chase’s third totaled car in a crash caused by speeding. “I feel that if he maybe had been accountable in any of the earlier collisions,” she told the judge, “maybe that would have helped him and maybe it would have prevented this terrible tragedy.”

That word—accountable—hung in the room like a question nobody wanted to answer directly: how does an 18-year-old total three cars from speeding in less than a year and still keep driving as if the road belongs to him?

Chase chose not to speak. His attorney read his statement.

“I apologize for the unimaginable pain and suffering I’ve caused your families,” the lawyer read. “I use the pedal to put all my emotions into, which turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life.”

The pedal. The brake that never got touched. The same part of the car that could’ve been a boundary but became a confession.

The hinged sentence, because it’s the quietest cruelty in this entire case: he found his voice through the gas pedal, and families found their grief through what he refused to do with the brake.

Andrea’s mother, through tears, said something that split the courtroom down the middle: she forgave him. Not because forgiveness fixed anything, not because it made Andrea’s life “insignificant,” but because she needed peace in her own heart to survive what came next. Some family members offered forgiveness too. Others said, flatly, that forgiveness doesn’t bring children back, and they were right.

Then the judge spoke, and the judge did what judges do when the human part of a courtroom has overflowed: tried to put fairness into months.

“We are here today because of a tragedy that should have and could have been avoided,” the judge began. He named the victims: Andrea Hudson, Boyd “Buster” Brown, Matilda, and Eloise. He acknowledged Nolan and Charlotte—seriously injured, enduring pain “that shall not be ignored.” He talked about letters, photographs, comments, a folder of words that demonstrated sorrow and fear and what he called “clouds of grief” and “holes in their hearts.” And then he said the sentence that always sounds like an admission of defeat, because it is.

“It is my job. I’m tasked with imposing a fair and just sentence… But nothing I do or say today is going to alleviate anyone’s pain, anger, frustration, or grief. I sincerely wish it could. But sadly, the law falls short of that promise.”

He asked the room—quietly—to remember the victims for who they were in life, not only for how they died: Andrea’s boldness and authenticity, Buster’s laughter and energy, Matilda’s kindness and sweetness, Eloise’s spunky curiosity. And he spoke to Chase too, noting letters that described him as thoughtful, respectful, caring, someone who had faced difficulties with “grace” and self-motivation, and that he believed Chase was generally remorseful.

“We are not defined by our worst moments,” the judge said, “but rather how we respond to those moments.” He told Chase he had potential, that he could learn and deter others, but only if his goals became actions rather than words.

Then the math.

On counts one through four: 210 months, concurrent. On counts five and six: 84 months, concurrent with each other and concurrent with the others. Eighteen months of community custody. No contact with the families. Restitution to be determined later.

In plain language: 17 and a half years—the low end of the possible 23-year range. With good time, Chase would be eligible for release in his mid-thirties. “He’ll be 36,” people whispered afterward, as if age could measure what was taken.

The hinged sentence here is the one that divides every audience that watches a sentencing: the court can count months, but families count empty seats.

Outside the courtroom, there was no dramatic satisfaction, no neat ending. There were parents walking out holding each other up. There were siblings who would grow up with a missing set of memories. There were the Hudson kids, Nolan and Charlotte, facing a lifetime of medical appointments and therapies, living in bodies that would always remember what one second did to them. There were first responders who’d said it was the worst scene they’d ever seen, going back to their lives with that image filed in the part of the mind that never really closes.

And there was Chase—eighteen at the crash, standing in court in 2025 with his face wet and his mouth closed, letting his lawyer speak for him. The families begged the judge to never let him drive again, because they understood something the internet never seems to fully absorb: this wasn’t just about punishment; it was about preventing the next kid who thinks 112 mph is funny.

The brake pedal returns here as more than evidence. In the crash report, it’s a fact: zero braking. In court, it’s a symbol: a choice not made. And on every road in Renton, it becomes a warning: the only difference between “normal day” and “forever” can be one foot deciding to stop.

The families left asking one question that didn’t fit neatly into any sentencing worksheet: will 17 and a half years stop the next teenager who thinks 112 mph is fun? Will a boy who totaled three cars in a year finally be the last warning, instead of the third ignored one?

If you want a clean moral, you won’t get it. What you get is an intersection that will never feel ordinary again, a Tuesday that will always carry a bruise, and a community forced to admit that sometimes the worst tragedies aren’t complicated—sometimes they’re just speed, ego, and a brake pedal that never gets touched.

The final hinged sentence is the one you carry with you the next time you’re first in line at a red light and the world feels safe: you don’t need to be reckless to lose everything—you only need to share the road with someone who is.