A quarter-mile, a U-turn, now a verdict: Ada jury convicts driver in fatal crash
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- .Jury in Boise-area trial convicted Cameron Watson of leaving the scene of an accident.
- The Sept. 13, 2024 crash killed 67-year-old Ross Masson of Meridian.
- Watson faces up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine under state law.
Cameron Watson was attempting to pass a bicyclist on the shoulder of North Black Cat Road, a two-lane road in Kuna, at around 2 p.m. on a clear Sunday afternoon, when her car — which was having mechanical issues — started lurching, the 28-year-old testified at her jury trial this week.
She looked down at her hands for a second, she said. Then she felt a thud: She had hit the cyclist she was trying to avoid.
Ross Masson of Meridian, was the cyclist, according to the Ada County Coroner’s Office. The 67-year-old — remembered by his daughter as an avid skier and cyclist who was always there when you needed him — died from traumatic blunt force injuries after he was taken to a nearby hospital.
Sitting in the witness stand recounting the incident, Watson described feeling scared, panicked and worried when she realized what happened. The accident happened nearly two years ago, on Sept. 13, 2024.
Watson said she stopped for a few seconds and briefly got out of her vehicle, looking behind to the man’s body. She got back in her car to find her cellphone and call for help, first trying to use Siri, then dialing 911, while also driving away.
That decision — to drive maybe a quarter of a mile down the street and turn around — was because she wanted to park closer to the bicyclist, who landed in a ditch behind her vehicle, she testified. But it also led a jury to find her guilty of a single felony count of leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in an injury or death.
Questioned by both her attorney and the prosecutor why she didn’t pull off on the side of the road immediately, Watson said she was in shock and didn’t see a place to stop. By the time she realized how far she’d driven down Black Cat Road, she said, it made more sense to her to turn around at the intersection.
She stayed at the scene for hours, cooperating with law enforcement. But the question posed to the jury this week at her trial was: Did she — if only for a minute — leave the scene of the accident?
Her attorneys reasoned that their client was repositioning her vehicle and had every intention of turning around, while the prosecution argued that as soon as she drove away, for whatever reason, she’d left the scene, and that she only turned back when another driver honked at her.
“You have to respect the verdict,” her private defense attorney, Adam Ondo, told the Idaho Statesman outside the courtroom. “We’re always disappointed but can’t complain.”
For victim’s daughter legal argument doesn’t matter
For the cyclist’s daughter, Jana Guzman, whether she left the scene of the crime doesn’t really matter.
“Like, who cares if she left and came back — or left and didn’t come back,” Guzman told the Statesman. “The fact is that she killed somebody, and we know it was her that did it.”
Originally from Idaho Falls, Masson attended Boise State University, where he met his wife of almost 50 years. He also competed on the university’s track and field team, adding to his love of extreme sports like cycling and skiing — which Guzman said was his favorite.
She said in an interview that she doesn’t remember a time when she couldn’t ski, as they’d go up to Brundage Mountain Resort in McCall every weekend.
His interests didn’t stop there, she said. Guzman herself is really into van life and said her dad helped her build out her camper van, and then got his own. They did a few camping trips together, including to the Oregon coast with her mom in 2022, but they’d planned to do more, she said.
“Like he knew everything, and now I don’t have that person to learn from, who can teach me about van stuff and like, help me when (stuff) breaks,” Guzman said through tears. “I had so much to learn from him, and so much to experience with him, and it’s all gone.”
Guzman said she’s trying to reckon with the fact that she knows Watson didn’t intend to harm her father, but at the end of the day, it happened — and it’s ruined their lives.
When asked her thoughts on Watson facing a maximum prison sentence of five years, she said part of her would like to see the woman behind bars for 15 or 20 years, but another part of her recognized that a long prison sentence doesn’t really benefit anyone.
“It’s a nightmare,” Guzman said. “It’s a nightmare that I’ll never be able to wake up from.”
Attorneys tried to dismiss felony — but judge left it to the jury
When a motorist hits and kills a pedestrian, there are several different charges — depending on the circumstances of the case, including the severity of the crime — that prosecutors can bring.
In Watson’s case, she wasn’t charged with anything until late last year, when the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office filed two felonies against her. Aside from the charge she was convicted of this week, Watson was also facing a reckless driving charge, but that was dismissed in February over a lack of probable cause, according to court filings.
Her attorneys attempted to get the fleeing charge dismissed weeks ago, arguing that a normal person wouldn’t think driving less than a quarter of a mile down to the nearest intersection counts as leaving the scene. “To me, leaving the scene means you leave,” Ondo argued in court last month.
But the presiding judge, Joseph Borton, said he’d leave the decision to a jury.
On Monday, 13 people, including an alternate, were selected after several hours of jury selection. In one afternoon, the jurors listened to five witnesses — including a young man who saw the accident happen — take them through that Sunday afternoon.
The eyewitness, who was driving behind Watson, corroborated most of her account. He said he saw her attempt to pass the cyclist, then veer to the right and crash into Masson. He also watched her drive to the end of the intersection and turn around, coming back to where his body had landed.
However, he didn’t see her immediately get out of her car. He stopped in the middle of the roadway, he said, adding when asked that he thought there was room on the side of the road for her to pull over.
Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Brett Judd, in his closing arguments, pointed to not only the eyewitness testimony that she could have parked on the side of the road, but also Watson’s own statement when she took the witness stand.
“There’s plenty of room for her to stop and pull over — she chose not to,” he said in court. “She didn’t choose to come back until someone else intervened and honked at her.”
To her defense attorney, the prosecution’s closing arguments second-guessed 60 seconds of his client’s behavior after she’d just struck and seriously injured another person. He added that Judd was “Monday morning quarterbacking the situation.”
The jurors weren’t persuaded, though. Watson will face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, according to state law.
Her attorney is hopeful that she’ll have a lot of mitigating evidence on her side. Watson is guilty in the “most technical of sense,” Ondo told the Statesman, adding that he’s hopeful the judge will take all of that into consideration at sentencing.
Watson faces sentencing in July. Until then, she’ll be in custody at the Ada County Jail.
This story was originally published May 22, 2026 at 4:39 PM.
