Siblings’ actions devastate 2 families

Melita and Antoine Briggs are bound by blood and bad decisions.

I’ve written about Melita Briggs over the past two years, most recently on Feb. 26. Three days before that, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the Feb. 8, 2015, drunken-driving crash on Interstate 70 that killed two of her passengers and seriously injured a third.

Last week, I was tipped to look more closely at a much more recent fatal crash, one that occurred Feb. 19, four days before Briggs was sentenced.

In that crash, a 31-year-old man in a Camaro drove off a ramp from eastbound Interstate 70 at Alum Creek Drive, crossed a grass median, and slammed into the driver’s side of an SUV merging onto the freeway from another ramp.

The driver of the Camaro was identified as Antoine Briggs.

I’ve come to learn that he is Melita’s younger brother.

Police said Antoine Briggs, who like his sister has a history of impaired driving and license suspensions, smelled strongly of alcohol following the crash that killed Louis Bamala, a 49-yearold married father from the Near East Side. Briggs’ blood was drawn for testing at

OhioHealth Grant Medical Center, where Bamala died.

Antoine Briggs has not been charged, but Sgt. Brooke Wilson said his detectives with the Columbus Police Division’s Accident Investigation Unit are preparing a case that could be passed on to prosecutors for review as early as this week.

The sibling connection was only hinted at after reviewing police records and court documents, which showed Antoine and Melita sharing an address. I figured out their relationship through other

records, and on Friday spoke briefly with their mother.

Through the metal grating of a locked security door, Marchita BreckenridgeBriggs told me her son wasn’t home and it was unfair of me to link the siblings publicly because the cases are separate. Melita, 33, has been punished enough, she said.

As a man behind her told her repeatedly to stop talking, she suggested that it was possible Bamala had died from causes other than being broadsided by a Camaro driven by her son at nearfreeway speeds. Then she shut the door on me.

That remark brought me back to Melita’s sentencing, when Assistant Prosecutor Amy Van Culin noted that Melita had suggested her victims were at least partly to blame because they got in her car.

“This court has an opportunity to show Melita that there are consequences for her actions,” Van Culin said. “But it’s not just for Melita. It’s for the whole county, the public. You get behind the wheel when you’ve been drinking or ingested drugs, bad things can happen, and you will have consequences for those bad things.”

Before my stop at the Briggs house, I visited another family.

Bibiche Bamala said she is reeling from her husband’s death. Mrs. Bamala works

as a home-health aide, but she has health problems of her own and is expecting the couple’s sixth child. The family tried to defray funeral costs through crowdfunding, but the effort was a bust.

“The funeral I did by myself,” Mrs. Bamala said. “No help.”

She said police told her they aren’t sure where Antoine Briggs is, and I explained what I could to her about grand juries, courts and possible reasons for delays.

“There is no justice,” she said. “He took life from my husband, after 20 years together.”

I called Ed Anthony, whose granddaughter died because

of Melita’s criminally poor judgment, just because I thought he’d want to know. What else was there to say?

Anthony had spoken to me over many months about his frustrations with a system that he feared treated defendants better than victims and their families. He waited months for Melita Briggs to be charged, and months more for her to plead guilty and be sentenced. When I spoke to him after that, he seemed at peace with her sentence and relieved that his family’s wait was over.

The wait for another family is just beginning.