Laura Varker Not Facing Manslaughter Charges… Yet
Let’s talk about Cinco de Mayo last year. 17 year old Laura Varker and a group of eight of her girlfriends celebrated the day tubing on Salt River and drinking. She then proceeds to get behind the wheel of her father’s Yukon Denali. While you may imagine the tragic outcome (yes another teen died,) who ends up facing criminal charges may shock you.
One of Varker’s girlfriends, 15-year-old Felicia Edwards, didn’t drink a drop. But it was Edwards who died when Varker’s Yukon Denali hit another car and flipped over and over like a tumbleweed before coming to a horrifying stop on the Bush Highway north of Mesa. Edwards was thrown from the SUV and pronounced dead at the scene.
When sheriff’s deputies called Felicia’s mother that terrible day, her first question was, “Was she wearing a seat belt?” She wasn’t. Instead, Felicia had been in the back of the SUV holding down the tubes — a decision she paid for with her life.
That’s a tragedy.
But only in its aftermath did the collision become a travesty. That’s because, even after blood tests showed that Varker was legally drunk, and even after sheriff’s investigators learned that it was she and another girl who’d flashed a fake ID and bought Coors Light and malt liquor for the group, Varker hasn’t been charged with anything.
Not underage consumption.
Not drunken driving.
And certainly not manslaughter.
Instead of charging the affluent white girl, the sheriff’s officers arrested the other driver, a black man, a guy who wasn’t even legally drunk.
Bryant Wilkerson was a 28-year-old postal service clerk with nothing on his record worse than a fender-bender. That day, he was merely making a U-turn, in a place where U-turns are permitted, when a 17-year-old party girl in her daddy’s SUV tried to speed around him.
Wilkerson did make a huge mistake. He panicked and fled the scene. The police did administer a breathalyzer when they caught up with him 10 minutes later and he registered a .049, well under the legal limit. A blood test done also put him at .001 and showed minimal trace amounts of marijuana.
So why is he the only one facing charges in the death of fifteen year old Felicia Edwards? Varker had a myspace page (which now seems to be down) showing her frolicking in a bikini.
Is this fair? Is it a case of the young pretty white rich girl getting off scott free when there is a young black male there to be the scapegoat? Is it that simple?
Read the article and let’s hear your thoughts on what should happen to both Wilkerson and Varker.
Check out another article on the tragedy here.
POSTED BY: Daisy
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