A Michigan girl is going through a number of prices after allegedly drunk driving right into a constructing over the weekend—killing two younger kids and injuring 13 others.
Marshella Chidester, 66, was charged with eight crimes—together with second-degree homicide and working inebriated inflicting dying—after she allegedly plowed her SUV into the Swan Boat Membership on Saturday afternoon.
Authorities say that Chidester crashed right into a kids’s party and killed 4-year-old Zayna Phillips and his 8-year-old sister, Alanah. Of the 13 others injured within the crash, 9 had been hospitalized and 5 stay in important situation.
“She took my grandbabies from us,” Kathy Phillips, the youngsters’s grandmother, mentioned on the Tuesday arraignment, in line with the Detriot Free Press. “She made that option to go in that automobile, and she or he selected to drink and drive.”
Monroe District Court docket Decide Christian Horkey set Chidester’s bond on Tuesday at $1.5 million, noting that family and friends revealed to investigators she has a “very extreme substance abuse problem.” If convicted, Chidester faces life in jail.
On the Tuesday listening to, Chidester’s lawyer argued that his shopper has a historical past of epileptic leg seizures and tragically misplaced management of her automobile earlier than the crash. He defined that Chidester solely had one glass of wine 4 hours earlier than the accident and that she didn’t have a earlier legal historical past.
“This isn’t a monster,” legal professional Invoice Colovos mentioned in court docket, including that his shopper drives like a “little previous girl.” “It’s horrible what occurred, completely horrible. I’ve two kids. It is completely horrible. However some issues we don’t have management over.”
Prosecutors, nonetheless, refuted the protection’s argument and revealed that Chidester’s “blood alcohol stage was considerably over the authorized restrict.” Monroe County Prosecuting Lawyer Jeffery A. Yorkey additionally famous that there was no indication that Chidester suffered from a seizure in the course of the incident.
“She indicated herself that she had some seizure points and she or he was on some treatment, and that she wasn’t alleged to be consuming, however admitted that she had been consuming that day,” Yorkey added.