Motorcyclist cleared in passenger’s death
Woman killed after falling from bike, run over by several cars
A motorcyclist probably won’t face charges for abandoning his date after she fell off the bike on Interstate 95 and died when several cars ran over her, investigators told the man’s lawyer.
But Miles McChesney’s journey isn’t over yet.
Attorney Russell Cormican said McChesney, 36, was cleared by a Florida Highway Patrol investigation into the Dec. 7, 2018, tragedy that claimed the life of Jennifer St. Clair, a woman McChesney had met that night after connecting on the Tinder dating app.
FHP officials turned over the results of the investigation to prosecutors, who have yet to formally decide whether there is a criminal charge McChesney could face. A Broward State Attorney’s Office spokeswoman said it’s still being reviewed.
McChesney was never interviewed by investigators and did not submit to blood alcohol tests the night of the incident, Cormican said. “He invoked his legal rights right away,” he said.
Todd Falzone, the attorney representing St. Clair’s parents in a civil lawsuit, wants a judge to order McChesney to answer questions about the night he met St. Clair, partied with her at three Delray Beach bars and nightclubs, and then, according to the lawsuit, left her to die on the highway, speeding away after she was struck and run over by multiple vehicles.
Court records show that from the time St. Clair’s parents filed the suit on Dec. 14, 2018, until last month, process servers couldn’t find McChesney to let him know about it and to have him formally questioned.
Once he was located in the beginning of August, McChesney was subpoenaed to participate in a virtual pretrial deposition via Zoom on Sept. 1. He didn’t show up, and once again, lawyers say they don’t know where he is.
All the questions that have nagged at St. Clair’s mother for the better part of two years — whether the motorcyclist was intoxicated at the time of the fatal ride, or why he chose not to wait for help to arrive — remain unanswered.
“There were people who were with them that night,” said St. Claire’s mother, Becky, who lives in Fort Lauderdale. “They know what happened. Come forward. Say something.”
Family members described Jennifer St. Clair, a server at multiple Broward restaurants, as “lighthearted” and “lovable.”
“It never stops, the heartbreak of losing her,” her mother said. “We’re still distraught. I don’t know that it’s ever going to fade.”
Falzone hopes that McChesney’s failure to appear for the deposition will prompt a Broward judge to hold him in contempt, which would allow the state to issue a warrant that McChesney would have to answer under pos
legal
sible threat of incarceration.
It could be the St. Clair family’s only chance to have him in court.
Falzone remains tight-lipped about his sources of information and how he knows where St. Claire and McChesney spent that Thursday night.
“While at these establishments … McChesney drank alcohol to the point that he became impaired,” Falzone wrote in the lawsuit.
McChesney was visiting South Florida from New York and had borrowed the Harley-Davidson motorcycle he was riding from his cousin’s friend, according to the lawsuit. McChesney was one of three bikers who left the Delray nightclubs together, but the group got separated on I-95.
It appears St. Claire fell off the motorcycle near Cypress Creek Road about 2 a.m. Dec. 7.
The owner of the motorcycle McChesney borrowed is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Through his attorney, Michael Gelety, motorcycle owner John Lewis has denied accusations of culpable negligence and said St. Clair is partly to blame for what happened because she should have taken a cab rather than get on the back of a bike on the highway at 2 a.m. after drinking.
Walter Williams, who struck St. Clair with his car, said he’s still haunted by what he saw.
“There was no way, there was no way I could see this person,” said Williams, of West Palm Beach. “It was right over the peak of the bridge. Once I came up, I couldn’t swerve. I didn’t have time to even swerve around. It looked like a person but I couldn’t, I wasn’t sure.”
A short distance away, Williams said he saw a lone motorcycle rider.
“He was sitting on his motorcycle a couple hundred feet south and not doing anything to direct traffic around and render aid. He was just sitting there,” Williams said. “I said, ’Is that a person lying in the road back there?’ And he said, ’Yes, she’s dead.’ I got back in the car and maneuvered around him. He was throwing leg over motorcycle. And he left.”
Williams stayed and waited for the FHP.
Efforts by the South Florida Sun Sentinel to locate McChesney for comment were unsuccessful. No lawyer is listed as representing him in the civil case.