WALDPORT – A Waldport man was arrested on manslaughter charges Monday night after his Jeep ran off a Forest Service road deep in the Coast Range and killed his friend.
David Vargues, 45, of Waldport died at Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport after fire department crews from Waldport and Seal Rock hauled him up 100 feet from a ravine off Forest Service Road 53 some 14 miles from where it branches off from East Eckman Creek Road.
Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Calvin Moreschini, 45, of Waldport at the hospital after he was treated for injuries. In a probable cause affidavit filed in Lincoln County circuit court, Deputy Aaron Brooks said Moreschini had a blood alcohol level of 0.145 when tested at the hospital – hours after the 8:30 p.m. mishap.
In his affidavit, Brooks said he arrived at the accident scene to find Moreschini being treated by fire department paramedics and his 1972 Jeep in a steep ravine 100 feet below the road.
“Moreschini told me he did not know where they had come from that evening or who was driving his vehicle, just that he ‘Woke up in the woods’,” Brooks said in his affidavit. “I could smell what I believed to be an odor of alcohol coming from Moreschini during my brief conversation with him.”
Brooks said medics told him that “Moreschini admitted to them he had drank ‘three or four’ beers earlier in the day …” and later admitted to police at the hospital he had been driving that night. Brooks said his investigation indicated that Moreschini lost control of the Jeep, hit a tree and ran off the road.
“It appeared to me that the vehicle, although being designed to drive off-road, was being driven at a rate of speed too high to navigate the forest road and gravel terrain safely,” the deputy said in his affidavit.
Crews from Central Oregon Coast Fire and Rescue and the Seal Rock Fire Department hauled Vargues up the bank and an ambulance took him to the Newport hospital, according to the sheriff’s office. Vargues died at the hospital, according to the affidavit.
Moreschini is being held on $250,000 bond at the Lincoln County jail with a court appearance scheduled June 3.
Fire department crews were on the scene until midnight.
