Drunk driver charged with killing a Charlotte bride denied bond, SC judge rules
The woman charged with killing a Charlotte bride on her wedding night in South Carolina will stay behind bars with no bond, a judge ruled Tuesday morning.
Police say Jamie Lee Komoroski, 25, was driving drunk in Folly Beach, S.C., at 65 mph when she slammed into the back of the golf cart carrying Samantha Miller, 34, The State reported. The speed limit on the island is 25 mph.
Komoroksi is charged with one count of reckless vehicular homicide and three counts of felony driving under the influence causing death or great bodily injury, according to jail records.
Three others in the golf cart — including the groom, Arid Hutchinson — were injured.
“This is certainly a very tragic situation for all concerned,” Circuit Judge Michael Nettles said after delivering his decision, Associated Press reported.
Komoroski’s attorneys were seeking a $100,000 bond under the conditions that she enroll in a rehabilitation program, remain under her mother’s supervision and not be allowed to drive or drink. She did not pose a community danger or flight risk, they said, and did not have a prior criminal history.
Komoroski had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.261%, according to a South Carolina forensic report obtained by WCNC Charlotte.
‘She killed all of us’
On Tuesday, Komoroski “looked visibly shaken throughout the proceeding,” AP reported.
So did Lisa Miller, the bride’s mother. “She didn’t just kill my child,” Miller said in court. “She killed all of us.”
The bride’s older sister, Mandi, was at Komoroski’s first appearance in court the morning after Sam died.
“There’s not enough time, in this courtroom, to convey the impact that this has had on my family, and everyone in my sister’s life,” she said to a judge, the Charlotte Observer previously reported. “She was the happiest she’s ever been, on that day. She’s a sister. A daughter. A cat mom. She had plans to be a mom. She wanted to have kids. … But now she can’t be any of that.”
In April, the judge’s decided Komoroski would be held without bail. She’ll stay there until her trial, which is scheduled for March.
If the case is not heard by then, she could be released on a $150,000 surety bond and placed on house arrest.
