Oak Harbor man sentenced for vehicular homicide

Published 1:30 am Friday, April 17, 2026

The life of a Crescent Harbor Elementary School teacher fell apart on June 5, 2024.

In Island County Superior Court Thursday, a representative for Kimberly Albert read her devastating victim impact statement to Judge Carolyn Cliff during a plea and sentencing hearing for the man responsible for the death of her radiant and compassionate daughter. Anna Noelle Albert was just 20 years old.

Travis Loetterle, a 35-year-old Oak Harbor resident, pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and felony hit-and-run and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In her statement, Kimberly Albert describes how her daughter called her at work that day to surprise her with plans for dinner. She told her daughter to stop by the elementary school to pick up the keys to the house. At about 2:30 p.m., she was in her classroom when she received a crash alert on her phone. She looked out the window and saw flashing lights.

She ran outside to the accident, she said, but a man stopped her, saying, “Trust me, you don’t want to see this.” She saw her daughter’s car, crumpled in the front, and a white truck with nobody inside.

As she waited, she saw her daughter’s dog, Quincy, being walked from the car, which gave her hope that her daughter was alive.

But it was not to be. Her heart sank and she felt weak and nauseous as a medical-lift helicopter was called to the scene and then sent away. Medics looked grave. A chaplain arrived.

“Finally, I had a glimpse of her little blond head as they placed her in the back of an ambulance,” Kimberly Albert wrote. “I rode with an officer behind them to the hospital, where I once again saw her as they unloaded her to the ER. That was the last time I ever saw my beautiful, precious girl.”

Grief filled her life, she said, manifesting in trauma and pain in every fiber of her body. She resigned from her teaching job, her cherished position, because she couldn’t bear to go back to the place her daughter’s life ended. The family’s financial situation was devastated as she was the main breadwinner for her family.

“Our happy family life is over,” she said. “The close and loving family unit that we had built and fostered and cherished is shattered. My hopes and dreams and plans that we had, and hope for, and shared together, are gone. My life as I knew it is over. Anna’s life is over. The defendant is to blame. My innocent daughter, who lived such a thoughtful, joyful and moral life is gone forever.”

Other family members also spoke about their loss and about their anger. Her grandfather, John Albert, wrote that Anna was looking forward to building a life on San Juan Island, which was her home. She loved caring for animals and the people she loved. She was a college student in Bellingham. Her father, Peter Albert, spoke about the pain left in the wake of the unfathomable tragedy.

“To know that all of Anna’s hopes and dreams will never be possible or come true,” he said. “To think about the pain and suffering Anna felt in the last moments of her life. I can tell you, it’s the worst pain imaginable.”

Deputy Prosecutor David Carman spoke about how Loetterle’s actions led to the tragedy. Under the plea bargain, Loetterle pleaded guilty, by way of an Alford plea, to the “reckless disregard” prong of the vehicular homicide statute, which carries a shorter standard sentencing range than the DUI prong. An Alford plea means that he maintains his innocence but concedes that he would be found guilty at trial.

Loetterle’s attorney, Michael Schwartz, said his client wanted the Alford’s plea because he couldn’t remember the collision. He added that police did minimal investigation at the scene.

Carman said Loetterle is a long-standing drug user who has an extensive criminal history. Blood tests showed Loetterle had fentanyl in his system, Carman said, but the test couldn’t be used to prove intoxication at the time of the collision since the defendant fled the scene and hid, then later claimed he took the drugs after the accident.

Schwartz said the state crime lab didn’t test the blood for other drugs so he sent a sample to a lab on the East Coast. The results showed that his client had Sublocade in his system. The medication is a partial opioid agonist taken by drug users to manage cravings. Schwartz argued that Loetterle may have had fentanyl in his system, but he wouldn’t have been high.

Loetterle was scheduled to go to rehab just days after the accident, according to court documents.

Carman discussed how Loetterle’s girlfriend tried to provide him with support to stay off drugs, even letting him use her vehicles when “he had a suspended driver’s license and was rapidly developing a consistent history of driving dangerously and fleeing from scenes.” At some point, he said, “sober support starts to look a lot like enabling.”

As the police report explains, the collision occurred on East Crescent Harbor Road. Loetterle was driving a Ford F250 truck on the “completely straight” road, crossed the centerline and struck Anna’s Toyota Highlander head-on. Carman said Loetterle fled the scene and texted his girlfriend, writing “I’m hiding,” “Please bail me out if I get arrest,” and “I’m so sorry my life is over.”

She told him that he needed to turn himself into the police, but she and her mother first took him out to eat, Carman said. She then drove him to the police station.

In agreeing to the recommended sentence, Judge Cliff empathized with Anna’s mother.

“But think of her mom. I mean, think of her mom,” she said. “She runs out of an elementary school to see nobody in the driver’s seat of the vehicle that causes the accident. They bring out her daughter’s dog on a leash. And somebody’s telling her she can’t go any closer ‘cause she doesn’t want to look.”

“It doesn’t get worse than that,” she added.