Left: Genise Taylor (Collier County Jail). Right: Arthur Gilbert (Town of Dorset).
A Florida woman sitting in jail for allegedly driving drunk when she fatally slammed into a nonagenarian while going the wrong way down the highway has allegedly made a startling admission in a phone call: She had been pulled over earlier in the night by a police officer who let her go.
Genise Taylor, 24, stands accused of DUI manslaughter in the death of 96-year-old Arthur Gilbert near Naples. The crash occurred shortly after 4 a.m. on March 18 on southbound Interstate 75 near mile marker 109.
Taylor was allegedly driving a Nissan Rogue north on southbound lanes when she crashed into Gilbert”s Volvo XC60. Paramedics rushed Gilbert to the hospital where doctors pronounced him dead. Medical staff also took a blood sample from Taylor that showed she had a BAC of .213, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08, a probable cause arrest affidavit said.
After receiving her Miranda warnings, Taylor told cops she put her daughter to bed around 9:30 p.m. on the night in question and went to a bar with a friend. She later said she went to a Waffle House to meet a guy. When asked what she had to drink that night she claimed she only had one glass of wine, the affidavit stated.
She allegedly “smirked” when asked by investigators who confronted her about drinking more than one alcoholic beverage.
But her consumption of alcohol was not the only detail she failed to divulge, cops say.
Prosecutors at a bond hearing Monday revealed that in a jail phone call with a relative, Taylor said a Collier County Sheriff’s deputy pulled her over hours before the fatal crash.
“She says, yes, she was stopped, and that she knew the officer,” said Mara Marzano, assistant state attorney, according to a courtroom report from local CBS affiliate WINK. Two friends then took Taylor and her vehicle to a Waffle House.
Traffic cameras picked up Taylor’s vehicle again around 3:30 a.m. at Golden Gate Parkway and I-75.
“She’s asleep at an intersection for half an hour or more, and then proceeds to somehow get on the interstate going the wrong way,” Marzano reportedly said.
Taylor’s attorney argued that “there was no intent for this to happen” but it was a “series of events that spiraled out of control and unfortunately ended in someone’s death.”
The Collier County Sheriff’s Office told WINK that the deputy involved in the initial traffic stop, Eric Pellegrino, is a subject of an internal investigation.
A judge denied Taylor’s request for a bond and she remains in the Collier County Jail.
Gilbert, a retired geologist originally from Vermont, had just dropped his wife off at the airport before the crash.
“I said Art, ‘I love you, and you’ll be with me forever,'” Pamela Gilbert said in an interview with local NBC affiliate WBBH.
As for Taylor, the victim’s wife said her fate was up to the courts.
“This woman will live with this for the rest of her life,” she told WBBH. “The law will take care of whatever needs to happen, and I couldn’t put my energy into that anger.”
