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Moments before a series of collisions that would claim five lives on Easter 2009, Marion Beckett said she nearly lost her own life to a reckless driver as they both turned onto Camp Creek Parkway.
Beckett, who testified Thursday on day two of the Aimee Michael trial, said a BMW ran a red light and nearly smashed into her as their paths crossed that afternoon at the parkway intersection with Butner Road in south Fulton County.
"I had to swerve and I stayed on my horn," said Beckett. "I put my window down and I yelled a few choice words."
The "frantic" looking woman in the BMW, who looked to be in her 20s, threw both her hands up and yelled something, in a gesture that Beckett read to mean that the BMW driver thought herself blameless.
Moments later, Beckett drove upon the immediate aftermath of the collision. Three children and two adults died when a silver Mercedes heading east ahead of Beckett crossed the median and slammed into an oncoming Volkswagen Beetle.
The Mercedes exploded, and the family inside died. A little girl in the Volkswagen also was killed and her mother was gravely injured. Becket called a police tip line that night after she learned it was a hit-and-run collision and that police were looking for the driver who caused it. She told them about the woman in the light-colored BMW.
“I thought I’d almost lost my life,” she told the jury. “That car that almost killed me was the car that had left the scene."
Eleven days later, police arrested Michael at her parent's home in the Walden Park subdivision of south Fulton. The daughter of an Atlanta elementary school teacher and a Department of Defense employee had graduated the year before from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in psychology. An Easter Sunday errand to pick up ice cream changed her life and dozens of others. Yet, there was testimony Thursday, that fours days after the wreck she applied for grad school at Wake Forest University.
Michael, now 24, is accused of initiating a chain-reaction crash on her way home from the store and then driving away to hide the evidence. Prosecutors contend that she collided with the Mercedes and set it spinning out of control. She could face decades in prison if convicted.
Her attorney admitted that Michael was guilty of a cover-up, but said she didn't cause the crashes. The lawyer, W. Scott Smith, said the Mercedes crossed into his client's lane and tapped her BMW, causing them both to lose control.
Yet a key witness said the Michael car started the series of crashes.
Smith told a jury at the trial’s start Wednesday in Fulton County Superior Court that a popping sound heard by a driver ahead of Michael was made by the Mercedes bumping into Michael before Michael swung back into the Mercedes.
But that driver, Ramona Barrett, a 21-year-old Spelman College student, testified Thursday that she only saw the BMW smashing into the Mercedes after she heard what sounded like a tire bursting. She said she didn’t see the Mercedes cross into the BMW’s lane.
When asked by a prosecutor whether she thought the pop she heard could have been the Mercedes making first contact, Barrett responded: “No it was not.”
The ensuing crash was horrific, according to those who saw it.
A medical examiner testified that Robert and Delisia Carter died on impact in the Mercedes and that their 2-month-old son, Ethan Carter, and Delisia Carter’s daughter Kayla Lemons, 9, were killed almost instantly from the heat of the fire.
In the Volkswagen, Morgan Johnson, 6, was killed. Her mother, Tracie, 43, survived but suffered broken legs, a broken hip and collarbone and damage to her spleen and liver. A Grady Memorial Hospital surgeon who operated on Johnson said he spent eight hours working on her multiple broken bones and that a third of patients with similar injuries die.
The defense contends Robert Carter, the driver of the Mercedes, caused the crash.
But prosecutors picked away at that strategy. In addition to Barrett's testimony about the cause of the popping sound, they presented a witness who testified that the Mercedes driver was perfectly sober.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation forensic scientist Frank Lewallen told jurors Thursday that the bodies of Robert Carter, who was driving, and of his wife, Delisia, who was seated beside him, did not contain alcohol or drugs.
Assistant Fulton District Attorney Tanya Miller said in her opening statement Wednesday that Michael and her mother took the 1998 model 740 iL BMW to a shop to have it repaired and re-painted and that Aimee Michael lied to police during questioning.
Michael's mother, Sheila, who was a second grade teacher at Cascade Elementary School at the time of the crash, pleaded guilty Monday to counts of tampering with evidence and hindering the apprehension of a criminal and was taken to the Fulton County Jail. She is to be sentenced at the end of her daughter’s trial.
John Mahabir, a mechanic at Lithia Auto Services, testified Thursday that he checked out the BMW at Michael's home the day after the crash. She called him at about noon, according to testimony, and offered to sell him health insurance. While he was visiting the home, she mentioned she had a car in need of repair in the garage. He looked it over, quoted a price of $1,500 to $1,700, and they agreed that she would drive it to his shop in Lithia Springs the next day.
But the car wouldn't start the following day, so Mahabir returned to the home with another worker and jumper cables to get it going. Michael gave him a cashiers check for $1,000 and he drove the car to his shop and fixed the body then sent it elsewhere to be repainted. Michael's mother picked up the car and paid off the balance owed in cash just days before her daughter's arrest.
Mahabir said Michael never told him she was in the Camp Creek Parkway crash, but when he learned of her arrest on April 23 he went to police. He testified Thursday that the BMW sustained significant damage in two spots: around the front and rear left side wheels and that the rear damage was consistent with a car driving into her from behind. But under questioning from prosecutors, he admitted he had no expertise with accident reconstruction.
Besides vehicular homicide, Aimee Michael is charged with one count of serious injury by vehicle and six counts of hit and run, plus misdemeanor counts of tampering with evidence, reckless driving and failure to maintain a lane. She was released from the Fulton jail on a $150,000 bond a couple weeks after her arrest, and has remained on 24-hour home confinement since.
Judge Kimberly M. Esmond Adams has said the trial could run through next week. It is to resume Friday at 9 a.m.
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