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Dancer from The Block in Baltimore indicted in officer’s death
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BALTIMORE (Map, News) - The Elkton woman suspected of killing a police officer while driving drunk New Year’s Eve was indicted Wednesday by a Baltimore City Grand Jury.
Kerri King, 35 — a dancer on Baltimore’s block of strip bars — is accused of automobile manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident and driving while under the influence of alcohol.
“There was a broad investigation, including gathering the evidence and rechecking the accident scene, that led to this indictment,” said Margaret Burns, spokeswoman for the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office.
On Dec. 31, King struck and killed Cpl. Courtney Brooks, 40, of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police as he directed traffic on northbound Interstate 95 at Exit 53, charging documents allege.
The maximum penalties for both automobile manslaughter and leaving the scene is 10 years in prison.
Investigators initially said they didn’t know if King was driving the vehicle that struck Brooks, but Burns said prosecutors now believe she was.
“That’s the allegation,” Burns said.
The indictment came one day after a Harford County District judge sentenced King to one year in jail for a November conviction for driving on a suspended license.
The night of Brooks’ death, King had been wanted on an open Baltimore City warrant for failing to appear in court on a drunken-driving charge. Both Baltimore City police and sheriff’s deputies said immediately afterward that it was the other agency’s responsibility to arrest King on the warrant.
At Brooks’ funeral, his close friends and family described him as a loving father of three.
Brooks, who lived in Hampstead in Carroll County, left behind his fiancee, Susan Geisler, whom he planned to marry next month, and three children, Casey, 17, Blake, 4, and Raigen, 2.
King has been charged several times with breaking laws on Maryland’s roads.
In June, she failed to appear in Cecil County District Court on driving with expired licenses from Maryland and Illinois.
In September, she was charged with drunken driving on northbound I-95 in Baltimore City, near the site of the fatal crash.
King’s arraignment in the latest manslaughter case is scheduled for May 19.
lbroadwater@baltimoreexaminer.com
Comments from Examiner Readers
4:39 AM MST on Fri., Apr. 18, 2008 re: "Dancer charged in hit-and-run gets no jail time in Harford case"
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The Undertaker said:
Staying a district court sentence pending appeal is not unusual. I can't see the controversy here.
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Examiner Reader said:
Unless there was provable intent to kill the officer, Maryland does not recognize a murder charge with this type of incident. Right or wrong...it's just how it is unless the law is changed. Hopefully, if convicted on both charges, her sentence would run consecutive which would put her at 20 yrs.
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Cee said:
In order to charge this person with murder, the definition of murder would have to change. Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice. Her intention was to get home or wherever she was going, not to kill anyone.
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The Undertaker said:
These cases are manslaughter cases. Murder charges would be dismissed by the court.
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Examiner Reader said:
Manslaughter is the appropriate charge. We don't need a mob mentality deciding the charges.
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Rocko the Magnificent said:
The charge certainly should be murder. I see little difference between getting drunk and then driving a car and firing a gun down a street where people are walking around. In either case there is a heightened case that you will kill or seriously injury someone. How many people have to die before our state will start to charge these killers with the appropriate crime. Furthermore, she was sentenced to a year in jail the day before. She should not have even been on the road the night she killed the officer.
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Examiner Reader said:
Manslaughter? How about Murder!
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