Monroe — Jurors deliberated less than two hours before returning a guilty verdict against a Monroe County woman accused of driving drunk through the wall of a local boat club last year, killing two kids and injuring a dozen others at a birthday party, rejecting the idea she had a medical issue.
They found Marshella Chidester guilty of all counts, including two charges of second-degree murder, after a four-day trial in Monroe County Circuit Court. The 67-year-old now faces up to life in prison when she is sentenced May 15.
Brian Phillips, the father of Zayn, 4, and Alanah, 8, who died in the April 20, 2024 crash at the Swan Boat Club, briefly put his hands in the prayer position in front of his face when the verdict was read. Other family members and loved ones hugged one another.
“I feel like the jury got this one right on all accounts,” Brian Phillips said. “I believe that she deserves to be where she’s at. My babies can finally rest peacefully. This is what we’ve been waiting for this whole time.”
The former Swan Boat Club commodore, who lived just yards from where the crash happened, was immediately remanded to jail. She’d previously been out on bond.
The verdict followed a four-day trial in which prosecutors painted a picture of Chidester as a woman who had been drinking long before the tragic crash. A party store employee testified that Thursday that he sold four small bottles of white wine and a standard bottle of red wine to Chidester the morning of the crash. Her blood alcohol was later found to be 0.18 — more than twice the legal limit.
“She drove her car into an occupied building knowing she was unfit to drive a vehicle,” Monroe County Assistant Prosecutor Ken Laurain said during closing arguments.
Chidester’s attorney, Bill Colovos, had maintained that Chidester had a seizure that caused her feet to flatten right before the crash, though no medical experts testified about a history of seizures. He also raised questions about the accuracy of Chidester’s blood alcohol results, suggesting fermentation caused them to be higher than they were.
But jurors didn’t seem to agree. Surveillance videos of Chidester from inside her own home in the hours before the crash showed her with what appeared to be a small bottle of wine in one hand and later with what appeared to be glass full of red wine. Those videos were played to jurors on Thursday.
Colovos said he and Chidester are “devastated” by the verdict.
“What’s troubling is so much social media and other media was covering this that, it’s a small community. … Can you get a fair trial, especially in a closed knit community?” Colovos said. “The community is tainted.”
Colovos said Chidester will be filing an appeal based on the rulings Monroe County Circuit Court Judge Daniel White made on his motions, especially the ones pertaining to suppressing evidence. He said the video that showed Chidester drinking in her home was “unreliable” and had been editing, though the officer who pulled the video denied this.
Laurain, the assistant prosecutor, said he had not planned to use the video of Chidester in her home drinking before the crash. He said he wanted to, as he had done in previous drunken driving cases, prove the case with the blood testing.
“But when he (Colovos) opened the door to trying to say it was just one glass of wine and a chemical process that caused her to have a .18 BAC, I felt it was appropriate to give to the jury the other evidence she had given us, essentially mostly from her surveillance camera, that she had consumed more than a glass of wine,” he said.
Phillips, meanwhile, said it was difficult to watch the video of Chidester walking around her home, drinking, the morning before the crash.
“It was haunting to see my kids were still alive at that point, that if she would have just stopped, my kids will still be alive,” Phillips said.
Emotional testimony
The trial included emotional testimony from Zayn and Alanah’s mother, Mariah Dodds, who also was seriously injured in the crash, along with her oldest son. She testified that the last thing she remembered before the crash was putting cake pops in front of her kids.
Dodds lost consciousness after Chidester plowed through the wall of the boat club, pinning Zayn under her front tire and Alanah between her front bumper and a doorframe.
At the time of impact, Chidester was using 100% of her accelerator, going 44 mph, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Brian Quinn said during the trial.
In other words, “her pedal was to the floor,” Quinn said. Chidester had not braked at all.
Colovos called three witnesses to testify for Chidester: Quinn, who had already testified for the prosecution; the waitress at Verna’s Tavern who served Chidester a cup of chili and a glass of wine around 11 a.m. the day of the crash; and an expert on forensic toxicology.
The forensic toxicologist, Okorie Okorocha, testified that there were compounds in the blood sample that would not have been there without fermentation, including acetone and isopropyl. He did note later in his testimony that if someone consumed alcohol, they could have some acetone in their blood, but it was not found naturally in blood.
“The fermentation greatly increases the alcohol level you have present. It can make it drastically higher or it can make alcohol where there’s no alcohol,” Okorocha said.
But MSP forensic scientist Tabitha Faust, the prosecution’s rebuttal expert witness, said the amount of isopropyl was “completely insignificant,” and the amount of acetone was a non-reportable amount because it was so small. She said acetone can occur naturally in people’s bodies if they have diabetes, eat a ketogenic diet, have high stress, are pregnant or if they’ve had a binge drinking episode.
Police, witnesses say Chidester was visibly drunk
Several witnesses testified during the trial that Chidester seemed drunk and smelled of alcohol after the crash.
Jason Wickland, the grandfather of the birthday boy, said he helped yank Chidester’s car door open after the crash and saw her in the driver’s seat, “fumbling around.”
“She was drunk,” Wickland said. “When I reached into the vehicle to shut the car off, I could smell alcohol on her.”
The birthday boy’s mom, Kristyn Sigler, said when she confronted Chidester after the crash, she also could smell alcohol on her.
Chidester told Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy Cody Carena that she’d had one glass of wine with lunch around noon, and that she did not remember anything after driving into the parking lot, according to body camera footage played in court.
“I have these seizures,” Chidester said, noting that the last one in March left her hospitalized for 10 days, but that her doctor had cleared her to drive.
Carena asked her how intoxicated she felt on a scale from zero — stone cold sober — to being passed out drunk at a 10. Chidester said she was at a “seven.”
“I wouldn’t want to drive, no,” she said.
Wine purchase at 9 a.m. day of the crash
Anthony Kathawa, who works at a Newport party store, said Chidester bought a four-pack of small bottles of white wine and a standard bottle of cabernet at 9 a.m. April 20, 2024, the day of the crash.
Prosecutors also played six home surveillance videos of Chidester in the hours leading up to the crash, walking back and forth from a sitting area to her kitchen. In four of the videos, she appeared to have a small, clear plastic bottle in her hand, similar to the mini bottles Kathawa said he sold Chidester that morning.
In the fifth, she walks into view with a wine glass filled with a red liquid. Kathawa also said he sold Chidester a botte of red cabernet wine. In the sixth video, Chidester walks to the sink with an empty wine glass, then moves toward a seating area with more red liquid in the glass.
Impact on the victims
When Dodds, Zayn and Alanah’s mom, woke up at the hospital the day after the crash, she asked her sister, who was crying next to her, why they were there. She told Dodds there had been an accident and her 11-year-old son was in the hospital with serious injuries while Zayn and Alanah had been killed.
“I started to freak out. I wanted to jump up, but I couldn’t,” Dodds said. “I tried to scream, and then everything was black again.”
Dodds spent four days in the hospital with a punctured lung, broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade, mouth and chin injuries and a lost tooth, she said.
The other victims named in the charges — Dodds’ 11-year-old son Jayden Phillips, 14-year-old Edward Smothers, 18-year-old Lia Stith and Diane Medina — all had severe injuries.
Jayden, who is now 12, still struggles to walk after breaking his femur and a bone in his lower leg in the crash, his dad. He was in critical condition after the crash and was airlifted to the hospital with a punctured lung, a head injury, a broken wrist and the broken leg bones, his dad said. He did not testify during the trial.
Following the verdict, Phillips said he planned to visit his kids’ graves.
“I’m really, really glad that the verdict came back on all counts,” Phillips said. “I believe they did get this right. The evidence clearly showed what she did, and she should be held accountable with what she did.”
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