Driver charged in Vermont accident that killed Treat Williams

The driver alleged to have fatally struck “Prince of the City” and “Everwood” star Treat Williams in a vehicle accident in Vermont on June 12 has been charged with grossly negligent operation with death.

State police said in a news release Tuesday, /that Ryan Koss, 35, of Dorset, Vermont, voluntarily met with troopers at the Shaftsbury Barracks, where he was processed on the charge and released. He is scheduled to appear for arraignment Sept. 25 in the Criminal Division of Vermont Superior Court in Bennington.

Williams, who lived with his family in Manchester Center, Vermont, was killed on Route 30 in Dorset when Koss, managing creative director of the Dorset Theater Festival, attempted to turn his southbound Honda Element SUV left into a parking lot, according to state police. He collided with Williams, 71, riding north on his 1986 Honda VT700c motorcycle, helmeted. The actor was thrown from his vehicle and suffered critical trauma and blood loss. He was airlifted to Albany Medical Center in Albany, New York, where he was pronounced dead, state police said. Koss suffered minor injuries.

The afternoon weather was clear, state police noted, and the road was “[d]ry blacktop free of debris or defects.”

A day before the citation was issued, Williams’ family — wife Pamela Van Sant Williams, 68, and their two adult children, son Gill and daughter Ellie — wrote on Instagram, “As time passes, the grief doesn’t get any easier, but life is fragile. We are trying to live every day like it’s our last, and appreciate the time on this beautiful planet that we are lucky to call home.”

Treat Williams rose to prominence with the movie musical “Hair” (1979) and starred in “Prince of the City” and “The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper" (both 1981), going on to appear in such films as “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), “Smooth Talk" (1985), HBO’s “The Late Shift” (1996), for which he earned an Emmy Award nomination, “Deep Rising” (1998) and others. On TV he starred in the legal drama “Eddie Dodd” (ABC, 1991) and the bucolic family dramas “Everwood” (The WB, 2002-06) and “Chesapeake Shores” (Hallmark Channel, 2016-22).

Williams played NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan’s (Tom Selleck) retired former detective partner, author Lenny Ross, on six episodes throughout the run of the CBS police drama “Blue Bloods,” most recently on the season 13 episode “Irish Exits” that aired May 12.