Bond is denied for South Carolina lady accused of killing newlywed bride in drunken crash

A decide has denied bond for a girl accused of killing a newlywed bride when she drunkenly slammed her Toyota Camry right into a golf cart alongside a South Carolina seashore highway.

Jamie Lee Komoroski, 25, will stay behind bars awaiting trial after officers say she drove over twice the pace restrict right into a low-speed automobile escorting a pair on their wedding ceremony day. Her blood alcohol content material exceeded 3 times the authorized stage, in keeping with a toxicology report. She faces costs of reckless vehicular murder and three counts of driving below the affect inflicting dying or nice bodily harm.

“That is definitely a really tragic state of affairs for all involved,” Circuit Choose Michael Nettles stated after delivering his determination.

Nettles requested that each events work to expedite the trial, which is presently scheduled for March 2024. If the case is just not heard by then, Komoroski will be launched on a $150,000 surety bond. She could be topic to digital monitoring and positioned on home arrest.

Komoroski, showing by video, ceaselessly turned her eyes upward throughout a short recess on Tuesday. She seemed visibly shaken all through the continuing.

“She did not simply kill my little one,” Lisa Miller, the bride’s mom, stated tearfully in courtroom. “She killed all of us.”

Attorneys for Komoroski had sought a $100,000 bond below the situations that she attend a rehabilitation program, stay below her mom’s supervision and forgo entry to a automobile or alcohol. They argued that she didn’t pose a group hazard or flight threat. In addition they famous her lack of prior legal historical past and powerful household assist.

The horrific April 28 wreck was preceded by two very totally different sequence of occasions round a preferred Charleston-area seashore city. Samantha Miller and Aric Hutchinson had simply left a marriage reception alongside the shore that included a shock mother-daughter dance and a sparkler-filled goodbye.

In the meantime, 4 institutions served “copious quantities of alcohol” to Komoroski as she grew “visibly intoxicated” whereas barhopping with new coworkers, the groom has alleged in a separate wrongful dying go well with. Komoroski later refused to finish a sobriety take a look at on the scene and required assist standing from a responding officer, in keeping with an affidavit obtained by The Related Press.

Hutchinson, the groom, was discharged days later from the hospital after present process surgical procedures to assist heal quite a few damaged bones which have positioned him in a wheelchair. Two different passengers with the marriage get together additionally survived their accidents.

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James Pollard is a corps member for the Related Press/Report for America Statehouse Information Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points.