Jailhouse tip leads to arrest in 3-year-old Kitsap County hit-and-run death

PORT ORCHARD, Wash. – A jailhouse tip led to the arrest of a 49-year-old Bremerton man in the hit-and-run death of a Port Orchard woman three years ago, the Kitsap County sheriff’s office said Friday.

Detectives said the man confessed after they arrested him at his downtown Bremerton home Thursday evening, saying he left the scene because he was scared. Detectives said he  “appeared relieved” after telling them what happened.

“To keep that secret that long finally caught up to him,” Det. Krista Hedstrom said.

Q13 News generally doesn’t name criminal suspects until they’ve been charged.

Chris Lukkasson was on her daily walk in October of 2015 when she was run down and left for dead on Victory Dr. SW. She was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, but died of blunt-force trauma the next day.

Thursday morning, detectives finally got a break in the case when an inmate at Kitsap County Jail said he’d been a passenger in the van that hit Lukkasson.

The suspect was booked into Kitsap County Jail on suspicion of felony hit and run, and is being held on $500,000 bond. He was scheduled to make his first court appearance Friday afternoon in Kitsap County Superior Court.

“I told (Lukkason’s family) from the beginning I wasn’t going to give up on them,” Hedstrom said. “We were going to work this case until it was solved.”