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A Navy officer jailed in Japan over a lethal automotive crash that killed two Japanese residents has been transferred into U.S. custody and is being returned to america, his household mentioned Thursday.
Lt. Ridge Alknois had been serving a three-year jail sentence after pleading responsible to the negligent driving deaths of an aged girl and her son-in-law in Could 2021.
“After 507 days, Lt. Ridge Alkonis is on his means dwelling to america. We’re inspired by Ridge’s switch again to america however can’t have a good time till Ridge has been reunited together with his household,” the household, based mostly in Dana Level, California, mentioned in an announcement to The Related Press.
It was unclear the place within the U.S. Alkonis is heading or whether or not upon his arrival within the nation he is perhaps required to spend any further time behind bars beneath the phrases of his switch from Japan.
“We respect the efforts of the U.S. authorities to impact this switch and are glad that an neutral set of judiciary eyes will overview his case for the primary time,” the household mentioned in an announcement.
“When the Biden administration is introduced with the whole set of info and circumstances surrounding the case, we’re assured they’ll promptly acknowledge the absurdity of Ridge’s conviction,” the household mentioned.
Alkonis’ household has mentioned the naval officer abruptly misplaced consciousness within the automotive after a lunch and ice cream tour to Mount Fuji together with his spouse and youngsters, inflicting him to droop over behind the wheel after struggling acute mountain illness. U.S. Navy medical doctors additionally concluded that Alkonis had skilled acute mountain illness, which is a medical emergency. However Japanese prosecutors and the choose who sentenced him contend he fell asleep whereas drowsy, shirking an obligation to tug over instantly. Alkonis was by no means medically examined by authorities in Japan.
“However he wasn’t drained,” Brittany Alkonis, the Navy officer’s spouse, instructed CBS Information after her husband’s conviction and simply earlier than he was resulting from start his jail sentence in 2022.
“He was superb and alert,” she recalled of his state main as much as the crash. “He had even observed that I used to be prone to getting automotive sick and instructed me to watch out.”
On the time, Alkonis’ spouse mentioned she believed political intervention from america would assist maintain him out of jail. However again then, the U.S. Embassy had solely mentioned it was watching his case.
Within the spring of 2021, after a interval of land-based assignments, the Southern California native was getting ready for a deployment as a division head on the usBenfold, a missile destroyer.
On Could 29, 2021, with the project looming, his household set out for an tour of Mount Fuji mountaineering and sightseeing.
That they had climbed a portion of the mountain and had been again within the automotive, heading to lunch and ice cream close to the bottom of Mount Fuji. Alkonis was speaking together with his daughter, then 7, when his household says he all of the sudden fell unconscious behind the wheel. He was so out of it, they are saying, that neither his daughter’s screams to get up nor the affect of the collision roused him.
After the crash close to Fujinomiya, he was arrested by Japanese authorities and held for 26 days in solitary confinement at a police detention facility, interrogated a number of instances a day and was not given a medical remedy or analysis, in keeping with an announcement of info supplied by a household spokesman. That assertion says that when American authorities arrived to take Alkonis into custody and return him to a U.S. base, he already was held by the Japanese.
He was indicted on a cost of negligent driving, leading to dying, and was sentenced to a few years in jail.
After the sentencing, Alkonis’ household had sought to maintain the case within the public highlight, together with by gathering exterior the White Home. President Joe Biden additionally raised the case throughout a gathering final Could with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Alkonis is a specialist in underseas warfare and acoustic engineering who on the time of the crash had spent almost seven years in Japan as a civilian volunteer and naval officer.
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