50-YEAR SENTENCE FOR HIT AND RUN DRIVER AIMEE MICHAEL

Mother to serve 8-years for Role in Tragic Cover-up

Atlanta- Aimee Michael, the 24-year-old driver who caused a deadly chain-reaction Easter Sunday crash last year will spend the next 36-years behind bars and fourteen years on probation. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams levied the 50-year sentence on Michael this afternoon. The punishment follows Michael’s conviction on Monday by a Fulton County jury on five counts of Vehicular Homicide, one count of Serious Injury by Vehicle, six counts of Hit and Run and one count each of tampering with evidence, reckless driving and failure to maintain a lane for the accident that resulted in the death of three children, a mother and father and serious injuries to one survivor.

Saying she failed in her responsibility to direct her daughter to do the “right thing,” Judge Adams sentenced Sheila Michael, the defendant’s mother, to eight years in prison. Mrs. Michael pled guilty at the start of her daughter’s trial to tampering with evidence and hindering the apprehension of a criminal for assisting her daughter in covering up the accident.

On April 12, 2009, Aimee Michael was driving along Camp Creek Parkway in South Fulton County when her gold BMW struck a Mercedes traveling alongside her in the eastbound lanes. The impact of that crash forced the Mercedes into on-coming traffic where it collided head-on with a Volkswagen. The fiery crash killed an entire family in the Mercedes: Robert Carter, his wife Delisia her nine-year-old daughter Kayla and the couple’s newborn two-month old son Ethan. Morgan Johnson, a six-year-old girl seated in the backseat of the Volkswagen was killed as well. Tracie Johnson, Morgan’s mother, survived the crash with multiple injuries.

After the accident, Aimee Michael fled the scene and hid her vehicle in the garage of her Walden Park home in South Fulton County. In the days that followed, Aimee Michael and her mother Sheila Michael conspired to have the damaged vehicle repaired to conceal evidence of the crash. Despite repeated public pleas for the hit and run driver to come forward, Aimee Michael failed to do so. She was arrested two weeks after the crash on April 23, 2009 after neighbors reported seeing the suspected gold BMW involved in the crash outside of the Michael’s family home.

The case was prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Tanya Miller with assistance from Deputy District Attorney Sheila Ross and DA Investigator Steve Dimasi. Investigator Mike Stark of the Fulton County Police Department led the preliminary investigation.

Media Contact: Yvette Brown, 404-224-0560/404-392-8867, yvette.brown@fultoncountyga.gov