Cherokee High School graduate Brittany Elaine Weiss once directed school plays about the consequences of drunken driving. Unfortunately, she found out the consequences personally, because on Friday, the 19-year-old Gordon College student was killed by a man accused of a DUI (drunken driving).
She went to see a tom cruise movie
Will Banks, a friend from high school, said he saw Weiss enter a movie theater Thursday night to see the tom cruise film “Valkyrie.” Weiss had just left a Canton movie theater at about 12:15 a.m. Friday when her 2008 Toyota Scion was struck broadside by a 2003 Town & Country minivan.
The driver of the minivan, Stephen Patrick Wauschek of Canton, is in Cherokee County Jail, where he faces charges of DUI and first-degree vehicular homicide, police said.
was he calling his lawyer while on the chase?
Canton police had tried to stop the suspect for possible DUI and an expired license tag, but Wauschek refused to stop. During a chase that police described as “low-speed,” the minivan ran a red light and struck Weiss’ Scion, police said.
He tried to run away on foot but was caught, authorities said, and had a suspended Michigan driver’s license.
Police said Wauschek had been arrested by Cherokee County Sheriff’s deputies in September on charges of DUI, striking a fixed object and attempting to elude.
A Cherokee County magistrate judge on Friday evening set Wauschek’s bond at $318,000, but, because he had violated probation from previous DUI charges, a hold was put on his bond, police spokesman Sgt. Jay Baker said. “He cannot bond out of jail unless the hold is removed [by his probation officer] at a later date,” Baker said.
Weiss, an only child, was pronounced dead at the scene. A passenger in the Scion, Kassandra Aileen Carman, 19, was injured and taken to Well Star Kennestone Hospital, where she was in critical but stable condition Friday.
“She was talking to Kayce [Kassandra Carman] as she was walking in. After the movie was over, it slipped my mind because I was in a hurry to get home. I wish I could have talked to her one last time to say goodbye.”
David Bachman, who knew Weiss since elementary school, said he hadn’t talked to her in a year but remembered her fondly.
“She was an angel,” he said. “Now that she’s gone, I think she still is an angel.”
Learn from this DUI that killed a young girl. Learn to get help.