The Georgia Court of Appeals has upheld the conviction of Whitney Howard, who was found guilty of homicide in the death of University of Georgia student Ashley Block. Block was killed in September of 2016, struck by a vehicle driven by an impaired Whitney Howard. Block was riding her bicycle on Athens Drive in Athens.
From Brian Patterson, Acting DA, Western Judicial Circuit…
On September 12, 2016, Whitney Howard, who was driving under the influence of a combination of drugs, struck and killed Ashley Block and seriously injured a fellow cyclist when she failed to maintain her lane on Athena Drive and hit them while they were riding bicycles. Despite the heroic efforts of a nurse, who stopped to render aid, Ashley died at the scene. Ms. Howard initially claimed that she “dozed off.” However, when law enforcement officers arrived, they noticed that Ms. Howard appeared impaired, and Ms. Howard falsely claimed that the cyclists struck her motor vehicle and that she could not avoid them. The physical evidence at the scene affirmatively disproved these false claims. At the police department, Ms. Howard voluntarily submitted to field sobriety testing, all of which were consistent with significant impairment.
Furthermore, toxicology analysis of Ms. Howard’s blood revealed that she was heavily abusing prescription drugs, which rendered her unsafe to operate a motor vehicle. In the final analysis, Ms. Howard’s decision to drive her motor vehicle while under the influence of drugs was the proximate cause of Ashley’s death as well as the serious injuries sustained by the other cyclist.
In my 18 years as a prosecutor, I have handled numerous cases involving Homicide by Vehicle and Serious Injury by Vehicle. This case is truly one of the most tragic and senseless. Most importantly, it was totally avoidable. Ms. Howard had no business driving a motor vehicle in that condition. Ashley was a highly intelligent, vivacious graduate student at the University of Georgia seeking her PhD in environmental conservation and had recently returned to Athens for the fall semester. She was just 25 years old, graduated summa cum laude from the University of the South in 2013, worked at Disney World for a year in conservation education at the Animal Kingdom, then worked at a private environmental services company in Orlando for a year before starting her PhD program at the University of Georgia.
After vigorously defending the charges and vehemently denying any and all wrongdoing at trial, she later claimed after the trial and on appeal that her defense attorney did not adequately convey a plea offer and that she wanted to plead guilty. Chief Judge Eric Norris rejected this false assertion, and the Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed his ruling on appeal. My heart goes out to Ashley’s family and friends and to the other cyclist who was severely injured by Ms. Howard’s wrongdoing.
Cox Media Group
Sign Up
