Illinois student smiles, giggles after killing couple in DUI crash: video

[mystery-ak]

May 5, 2023 12:55pm EDT
Illinois student smiles, giggles after killing couple in DUI crash: video
Stephanie Melgoza, 24, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the fatal April 2022 accident

By Rebecca Rosenberg | Fox News


   An Illinois woman who giggled and smiled after she killed two people in a 2022 drunk driving crash was sentenced to 14 years in prison last week.

In disturbing police body camera video obtained by Fox News Digital, Melgoza, 24, can be seen singing and smiling after the tragic collision.

Melgoza, whose blood alcohol level registered at .264 — more than three times the legal limit — showed no concern when an officer told her that she had fatally struck Paul Prowant, 55, and his girlfriend, 43-year-old Andrea Rosewicz.

At the hospital, East Peoria Officer Jeffrey Bieber appeared to grow frustrated after Melgoza repeatedly told him she had to go to school the next day.


A still shot from body camera footage shows Stephanie Melgoza, 24, laughing during a field sobriety test minutes after drunkenly killing Andrew Rosewicz and Paul Prowant with her car in Illiniois. (East Peoria Police Department/ Dignity Memorial)

"You want me to be honest with you. You’re going to jail. You don’t have a bond. You killed two people tonight. I don’t think you understand that," Bieber snapped at Melgoza, who was sitting in a hospital bed, after the April 10, 2022, crash.

The former Bradley University student stared blankly and then asked whether she would make her night class later that week.

excerpt:

Earlier that night, Melgoza called 911 after hitting the couple outside the bar Full Throttle at around 10 p.m.

Officers who responded to the gruesome scene found her red Dodge Dart totaled with a severed leg "sticking out of the grill," a police report says.

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https://www.foxnews.com/us/illinois-student-smiles-giggles-killing-couple-dui-crash-video

[Kamaji]

If she was at 0.234 BAC, then she was too drunk out of her mind to understand anything that was going on.  So the laughing and the giggling doesn't really represent her own unadulterated response to what happened.

That being said, this is an object lesson in why drunk driving is so damned dangerous:  a sufficiently drunk person loses most contact with reality, and completely fails to comprehend what they've just done, including very terrible things that would have overwhelmed a sober person.

So, she shouldn't be ganged up on for the giggling at the field test; she should also not be given leniency at trial for what she's done.  She should spend a long time behind bars for this.

[mystery-ak]

If she was at 0.234 BAC, then she was too drunk out of her mind to understand anything that was going on.  So the laughing and the giggling doesn't really represent her own unadulterated response to what happened.

That being said, this is an object lesson in why drunk driving is so damned dangerous:  a sufficiently drunk person loses most contact with reality, and completely fails to comprehend what they've just done, including very terrible things that would have overwhelmed a sober person.

So, she shouldn't be ganged up on for the giggling at the field test; she should also not be given leniency at trial for what she's done.  She should spend a long time behind bars for this.

Agree with your post...if you watched the whole video she was in the local hospital I guess for further tests where she complained she had classes the next day and she couldn't wait to tell her friends that she made it into the *DUI Club*...she got 14 well-deserved years in prison.

[sneakypete]

If she was at 0.234 BAC, then she was too drunk out of her mind to understand anything that was going on.  So the laughing and the giggling doesn't really represent her own unadulterated response to what happened.

That being said, this is an object lesson in why drunk driving is so damned dangerous:  a sufficiently drunk person loses most contact with reality, and completely fails to comprehend what they've just done, including very terrible things that would have overwhelmed a sober person.

So, she shouldn't be ganged up on for the giggling at the field test; she should also not be given leniency at trial for what she's done.  She should spend a long time behind bars for this.

@Kamaji

Speaking as a former drunk,I  agree with every word  you wrote,and will add that not knowing what you were doing is no excuse if you purposely put yourself in a condition to do things like that without knowing what you were doing. You DID know you were getting blind drunk,so you ARE responsible.

[Smokin Joe]

Anyone still functioning after a fashion with a .234 BAC is a veteran drinker, and most likely someone who is used to consuming alcohol in quantity on a daily basis.

Lots of folks who don't drink often would be puking in the scuppers before then,and would have a hard time crawling to the car, much less attempting to drive it.

She may even have been blacked out.