By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
The 29-year-old man charged in the alcohol-poisoning death of Onalaska teenager Nickolas Barnes is scheduled to plead guilty tomorrow.
James W. Taylor was charged with second-degree manslaughter in the Sept. 2009 death of the 15-year-old, but is expected to plead guilty to second-degree assault, as well as furnishing liquor to minors and failing to summon assistance, according to the Lewis County Prosecutor’s Office.
Elected prosecutor Jonathan Meyer said Taylor faces a possible sentence of somewhere between three and nine months in jail. The father of four could have been sent to prison for as long as 27 months if convicted on the original charges, prosecutors said when they first filed the case last October.
The Onalaska High School sophomore died on Sept. 21, 2009, after playing drinking games with vodka at an underage party in Taylor’s Onalaska home, according to charging documents.
Charging documents say after Nickolas and a 16-year-old boy downed more than 11 shots of vodka, Nickolas passed out in the front yard, where his friends removed his clothes and wrote on his body with a black marker.
Prosecutors alleged Taylor told the teenagers to “let him sleep it off.”
Newly elected Prosecutor Meyer said today he didn’t think, but wasn’t certain, any of the eight other teenagers at the party were charged with failing to summon assistance.
Taylor is set to appear before Judge Richard Brosey tomorrow morning in Lewis County Superior Court in Chehalis.
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Read background on the case “Remembering Nickolas Barnes” from Thursday Sept. 23, 2010 here
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter