Easter crash trial | Case set to go to jury Wednesday

It will take a jury with a keen grasp of physics, or at least a pool shark’s intuition about the motion of colliding objects, to unravel the contradictory theories behind the cause of an Easter 2009 crash that killed five people in south Fulton County.

Aimee Michael, 24, has been on trial since last week for her role in the deaths of an entire family in one car and of a little girl in another.

She is the daughter of a former Atlanta elementary school teacher and a Department of Defense employee who was in Saudi Arabia at the time of the crash. Michael had graduated the year before from the University of Pittsburgh with a major in psychology. She had planned to go on to business school -- and even filed an application with Wake Forest University four days after the crash.

But the crash changed her life. She has admitted to police that she fled the scene and, with her mother’s help, paid a body shop to repair the damage and hide the evidence. But she contends she did not cause the crash.

So the jury will have to decide some of the most serious charges, involving the deaths of the victims, based on the dueling testimony of crash reconstruction experts.

A Fulton police investigator and a civil engineer from North Carolina who was hired by prosecutors testified that Michael steered suddenly into a silver Mercedes driving alongside her on Camp Creek Parkway and that the cars tapped again as they spun out of control.

But a retired state police investigator paid by the defense testified that the Mercedes hit Michael first, causing her car to lose control and collide two more times with the Mercedes.

Both cars spun across the median into westbound traffic, and the Mercedes slammed into an oncoming Volkswagen Beetle.

Killed in that collision were Mercedes driver Robert Carter and his wife, Delisia, with their 2-month-old son, Ethan Carter, and Delisia Carter’s daughter, Kayla Lemons, 9.

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 westbound Honda Accord also was caught in the crashes, but the woman driving it was not injured and neither were her two children.

Michael avoided another collision and her car came to rest in the westbound lanes. By her own admission, she then drove home and hid the car, a gold BMW 740 iL, in the garage. Then, with her mother’s help, she got it fixed.

For the next 10 days, police searched frantically for the vehicle. Finally, based on tips from suspicious neighbors, an officer found it in the driveway, smelling of fresh paint.

Hours later, Michael went to police headquarters with her mother and grandmother to give an interview. She initially denied any involvement in the crash and claimed any damage to the car existed when it was bought at auction. But she ultimately admitted she was on an ice cream run to Publix in her parents’ BMW when she collided with a Mercedes and that she then fled the scene and had the BMW repaired.

When an officer asked her how the crash happened, she gave this explanation, according to a video of the interview that was shown to jurors Monday:

“All I remember is turning my wheel back. I could see a car coming in my lane.”

She was sobbing, and the officer tried to console her.

“That’s why it’s called an accident,” he said.

“No,” she responded. “It doesn’t matter that it was an accident. They’re all gone.”

Michael was charged with five counts of vehicular homicide, 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.

Her mother, Sheila, pleaded guilty last week before the trial started to counts of tampering with evidence and hindering the apprehension of a criminal. She was taken to the Fulton County Jail and is to be sentenced at the end of her daughter’s trial.

Prosecutors presented more than two dozen witnesses. Cell phone company representatives and the auto body repair man who fixed the BMW testified about the calls and meetings that took place to arrange the repair.

Neighbors testified about Aimee Michael’s behavior after the crash. The BMW that was usually in the driveway was nowhere to be seen, and Michael told one neighbor over the phone that she was out of town visiting a sick aunt.

Witnesses of the moments before and during the crash said Michael had driven recklessly through a red light to get onto Camp Creek Parkway and had steered into the Mercedes in its own lane. And none of the several witnesses of the aftermath, from civilians to police and firefighters, recalled seeing the gold BMW there later, as rescuers tried to pull Johnson from the VW while the Mercedes next to it burned.

The prosecution rested its case Tuesday, and the defense called only one witness.

Jeffrey Alan Kidd, a recently retired Georgia State Patrol accident investigator, said the tire marks left at the scene and some of the damage to the cars indicated to him that the Mercedes bumped the BMW first, triggering two other hits that sent both cars spinning.

Kidd, working for the defense, was countering an assessment by two witnesses for the prosecution -- Fulton investigator Michael Stark and North Carolina civil engineer Ronald E. Kirk -- who said Michael drove into the Mercedes first, leading to a second impact that sent the cars sliding across the road.

Months ago, the experts for the prosecution believed that Michael had been traveling at more than 70 mph. But they have since revised that estimate down to the speed limit, 55 mph.

The experts from both sides were working with the same spare evidence: pictures of the tire marks on the road and of the damage to the cars, Michael’s statement to police and the testimony of an eyewitness who was driving ahead of the collision.

That witness, Romona Barrett, a senior at Spelman College, told the jury last week while testifying for the prosecution that she heard a popping sound moments before she looked into her rear view mirror and saw the BMW hit the Mercedes.

On Wednesday morning, the jury will hear from Barrett one more time. She is being called back by Michael’s lawyer, W. Scott Smith, to explain the account of the crash that she gave a 911 operator moments after it happened.

The recording was played Tuesday afternoon with the jury out of the courtroom.