Mother of US bride killed in crash condemns driver who ‘chose to drink’
The mother of a South Carolina bride killed by an allegedly drunk motorist just moments after her wedding has lashed out at the accused driver, saying she made “a conscious choice” that turned deadly.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Lisa Miller said to Fox News of the 28 April crash that killed her daughter, Samantha Miller, and led to the arrest of Jamie Lee Komoroski.
“This person chose to drink, get behind the wheel and plow down my daughter. This is a conscious choice that a young lady made.”
Meanwhile, attorneys for Komoroski – whose blood alcohol level allegedly was more than three times the legal limit at the time of the crash – have issued a statement urging the public to avoid “a rush to judgment”.
“Our court system is founded upon principles of justice and mercy, and that is where all facts will come to light,” the high-profile attorneys, former federal prosecutors Nathan Williams and Christopher Gramiccioni, said in part in a statement to the Post & Courier newspaper in Charleston.
Samantha Miller, 34, had married Aric Hutchinson in front of 120 guests hours before her death. The couple were leaving their reception on Folly Beach, South Carolina, on a golf cart about 10pm when Komoroski hit them in a rental car.
Miller died in her wedding dress. Three others with her in the golf cart were hurt, including Hutchinson, who went to hospital in critical condition with a brain injury and numerous broken bones.
Komoroski, 25, was going 65mph (105km/h) and tried to brake before she hit the golf cart, which had lights and was appropriately equipped to be driven at night, according to data retrieved from the rental car. Komoroski allegedly refused to submit to a field sobriety test. Police later obtained a warrant to draw her blood at a hospital as well as test it for intoxicants.
Authorities on Thursday announced Komoroski’s blood-alcohol level was 0.261%, well above the legal limit of 0.08%. Most people with a BAC of more than 0.25% have “severely impaired” mental, physical and sensory functions, can “pass out suddenly”, and are “very likely” to have accidents, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Komoroski faces charges of reckless vehicular homicide and causing death while driving under the influence. Each count carries up to 25 years in prison.
Some of Komoroski’s posts on social media have since come under scrutiny, including one picture in which she is sitting on top of a car with the accompanying caption “move b***h get out da wayyyy” and other images where she is around alcohol.
Lisa Miller, an addiction specialist, told Fox she and her daughter had danced at the reception to Bruno Mars’s Just the Way You Are. She said her daughter’s wedding had been so perfect that Samantha told loved ones as she left she wanted “the night to last for ever”.
As Lisa Miller told it, Komoroski had ruined a love story that began with a chance encounter on a hotel elevator between Samantha – who worked in marketing – and Hutchinson, who sells construction supplies, while they were on separate business trips in Idaho.
Despite the heartbreaking circumstances, Lisa Miller said her family was not planning to have a mournful funeral for her daughter, whom she called Sam.
“We are having a celebration of Sam just like at that wedding,” Lisa Miller told Fox. “There are not going to be any people wearing black – because that’s what Sam would have wanted.”
Source: The Guardian US
