Alkonis case brought back memories of infamous Girard Incident

CALIFORNIA — Navy Lieutenant Ridge Alkonis was a weapons officer stationed on the USS Benofold at Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan in 2021. In May of that year, he took his wife and three children on a scenic drive to iconic Mount Fuji. On the way back down he blacked out and drifted into a restaurant parking lot where he crashed into several cars and pedestrians, causing the death of two Japanese people, an 85-year old woman and her 54-year-old son-in-law, who had been enjoying a birthday celebration.

Alkonis paid a solatium of ¥160 million to the survivors of the deceased and expressed his remorse, claiming that mountain sickness caused him to pass out. Nevertheless, a Japanese court found Alkonis guilty of negligent driving the following year, determining that he had simply  fallen asleep, and that acute mountain sickness can not occur at the altitude of 1,000 feet above sea level which is where the accident happened. The panel of three judges sentenced him to three years in prison in September 2022, a decision Alkonis declined to appeal.