Tim HrenchirTopeka Capital-Journal
A Shawnee County District Court jury on Thursday found Topekan Amber Peery guilty of all charges she faced, including five felonies, linked to an October 2022 crash that killed three Girl Scouts on the Kansas Turnpike near Auburn.
The eight-man, four-woman jury deliberated four hours, 40 minutes before rendering the verdict on what would have been the 11th birthday of one of the victims, Kylie Lunn.
"I think the jury did a great job," said Tony Roth, one of Kylie's grandparents.
Jackie Lunn, another of Kylie's grandparents, said she thought justice was done.
"We're glad it's over," she said.
Assistant Shawnee County District Attorney Will Manly prosecuted the case against Peery, 34, whom Shawnee County District Judge Jessica Heinen scheduled to be sentenced at 10 a.m. Oct. 3.
Two uniformed Shawnee County Sheriff's deputies were among the 21 people who watched from the gallery as Thursday's verdict was announced.
A bond Peery had posted in the case last year was then revoked. Those deputies took her from the courthouse to the Shawnee County Jail, where she was booked at 6:10 p.m. Thursday. Jail records showed she was being held without bond early Friday.
Who were the victims?
Three of Peery's passengers died, including one of her daughters, and two others were injured, including her other daughter, when a semi-trailer struck the rear driver's side of the van Peery was driving at 9:07 a.m. Oct. 8, 2022.
The crash occurred as Peery sought to make a U-turn in front of the semi to pass through an opening in the barrier wall on the Turnpike, witnesses testified at this week's trial.
Jurors at the end of her four-day trial Thursday afternoon found Peery guilty of three felony counts of involuntary manslaughter, two felony counts of aggravated battery and one count each of failure to maintain a single lane and making a U-turn on an interstate highway.
The involuntary manslaughter charges filed by Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay's office were linked to the deaths of Laila El Azri Ennassari and Kylie Lunn, both 9, and Brooklyn Peery 8. Brooklyn was Amber Peery's daughter.
Amber Peery and her two other passengers — her daughter Carrington Peery, then 5, and Gabriella Ponomarez, then 9 — suffered injuries but survived. Amber Peery's aggravated battery convictions were linked to the injuries suffered by those two girls.
What were jurors directed to take into account?
To convict Peery of involuntary manslaughter and/or aggravated battery, jurors were told, they were required to conclude she drove recklessly and consciously in a manner that posed a substantial and unjustifiable risk to others.
Jurors were also required to conclude Peery's behavior constituted "a gross deviation from the standard of care a reasonable person would observe under the same circumstances" to convict her on those counts, they were told.
Jurors were told that the fault or lack of fault of the other driver involved, 72-year-old Robert Russell, of Huntsville, Alabama, was among circumstances they were to consider in reaching their verdict.
Jurors were given the option on each of the the three counts of involuntary manslaughter of convicting Peery of the lesser crime of vehicular homicide, which is a misdemeanor,
What happened in the crash?
Testimony at this week's trial showed Amber Peery was part of a caravan of three drivers en route to a Girl Scout event in Tonganoxie when they started southbound on the Kansas Turnpike from its south Topeka interchange.
Two drivers realized they were going the wrong way and turned around, making U-turns through an opening in a Turnpike barrier wall between the highway's northbound and southbound lanes, testimony indicated.
Peery said she took the advice one of those drivers provided by cell phone suggesting she also find a place to turn around. No off-ramps exist betweenthe South Topeka interchange and the Turnpike's Admire interchange, 30 miles to the southwest.
Video shown at Peery's trial showed she tried to make a U-turn from the right southbound lane through the southbound Turnpike's left lane to go through an opening in the barrier wall before ner SUV was hit by a semi-trailer driven by Russell, who was driving 69 mph in the 75-mph zone and using his cruise control.
Russell testified at Peery’s preliminary hearing that he had been southbound in the right lane when he saw Peery’s van ahead of him on the right shoulder, and he responded by moving to the left southbound lane.
Peery’s defense attorneys, Tom Bath and Vanessa Riebli, raised questions about how well Russell had been paying attention to the road and the other vehicles on it.
They stressed that forward-looking video taken from Russell’s truck showed Peery turned from the right southbound lane— not the right shoulder, as Russell had said— and that she activated her left blinker before turning.
Bath and Reibli also suggested the Kansas Highway Patrol had failed to pursue some avenues of investigation they should have.
Manly acknowledged in closing arguments Thursday that troopers could have investigated the crash more thoroughly but said the law, combined with the facts of the case, nevertheless required that Peery be convicted on all counts.
Manly showed jurors a video of the crash Thursday while stressing that Peery knew a semi-trailer was following her, yet didn't even bother to pull over to the shoulder and wait for traffic to clear before she attempted to make a U-turn.
Instead of pulling over, he said, she sought to make that U-turn from the Turnpike's right lane.
Jurors began deliberations about 12:15 p.m. Thursday, with the announcement that they had reached a verdict coming about 4:55 p.m.
Contact Tim Hrenchir at threnchir@gannett.com or 785-213-5934.
