Bond reduction rejected

Woman faces DUI charges in crash that killed Delray officer

The woman facing DUI charges in the Key West crash that killed a Delray Beach police officer lost a bid Thursday have her bond reduced.

Monroe Circuit Judge Mark Jones refused to lower the $170,000 bond for Lacy Morris, saying she was both a danger to the community and a flight risk.

The bond was “more than reasonable under the circumstances,” he said.

The crash happened in April in Key West when investigators say Morris veered into the path of a 2014 Yamaha Zuma scooter ridden by Officer Christine Braswell, 40, and fellow Officer Bernenda Marc. The two officers, both from Lake Worth, were off duty and on a three-day vacation.

Morris, who lives in Summerland Key, is accused of smoking marijuana and drinking before driving a Nissan Altima to get fried chicken. Morris had a blood-alcohol level of 0.17 after the crash, Key West police said, citing blood test results. The legal limit is 0.08.

After the Nissan and Yamato ha collided, Braswell and Marc were ejected from the scooter and landed beneath the sedan’s front end.

The prosecutor said Thursday that the entire accident happened within Braswell’s traffic lane. Morris told investigators she saw the Yamaha, but that she thought it was far enough away for her to turn into their lane and get to the store’s parking lot.

Morris remained shackled and often looking downward during the hearing. Her father testified he could lose his house if she were to flee because it’s what he will post as collateral. “She’s not going to go anywhere,” her attorney, Evan Hoffman, urged the judge.

The judge also approved the prosecution’s request to get a DNA sample from Morris. The prosecution said they wanted to match her DNA to a marijuana joint found in the car. Hoffman argued that a match wouldn’t prove she smoked that specific joint, only that she touched it.

“It’s a non-issue,” he said, saying prosecutors can’t prove when she smoked, so they are trying to link her to that joint.

In courtroom comments streamed by WPTV-Ch. 5, Bernenda Marc, 26, said her injuries have left her unable to return to work as a Delray Beach police officer or to do military service in the Army National Guard. Marc’s injuries included a concussion, four fractured ribs and a lacerated spleen, according to the arrest warrant.

The “crash left me fighting for my life,” she said Thursday, and doctors told her that it is “remarkable I survived.”

She told the judge she has “periodic pain and permanent damage that will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

She said after the hearing that she takes things “day by day.”

“Some days are harder than the others,” she said.

Braswell joined the Delray police department in 2005, where she specialized in crisis management and teaching younger recruits. She was also a field training instructor at the police academy at Broward College and was the only female sniper on the SWAT Team in Palm Beach County.

Hoffman said after the hearing that Morris is “worried, concerned, devastated.” He said surveillance video from a gas station shows Morris going under the speed limit and using her turn signal and a “scooter flying by ... with no concern where they were going, and hit the car.”

“If it had wings it would be flying it was going that fast,” he said of the officers’ scooter.