Sugarloaf Key woman has pleaded no contest to driving under the influence-manslaughter

A Sugarloaf Key woman has pleaded no contest to driving under the influence-manslaughter and other charges for killing a police officer and seriously injuring another while driving under the influence in Key West and has been sentenced to 10 years in Florida State Prison.

Lacy Morris, 33, entered the plea April 12 before Monroe County Circuit Court Judge Mark Jones, who imposed the sentence. Assistant State Attorney Colleen Dunne represented the state. Morris’ prison sentence for killing Christine Braswell will be followed by two years of house arrest and another year of probation, and her driver’s license has been suspended for life. Her plea includes charges of DUI-serious bodily injury, DUI-property damage and possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana.

“The only comfort I can get out of all of this is she is in heaven,” Braswell’s father Daniel, also a police officer, said at sentencing. He told Morris that “your total disregard for human life was inexcusable.”

“She was my best friend, my heart-mate, my daughter,” Braswell’s mother Barbara said.

Prosecutors and Braswell’s family agreed to the plea deal to spare the pain of a trial and to begin the process of achieving closure.

Morris was behind the wheel of a Nissan Altima on April 8, 2017, when she made a turn into a Yamaha scooter operated by Christine Braswell, a Delray Beach police officer. Braswell, who was 40 and had been with the Police Department for 12 years, later died at Ryder Trauma Center in Miami from “multiple blunt-force injuries,” according to the attending medical examiner. Her passenger on the scooter, fellow Delray Beach Police Officer Bernenda Marc, 25, suffered critical head and other injuries, including four fractured ribs and a lacerated spleen, but survived.

Marc told Morris she has “survivor’s guilt” but no longer considers herself a victim of a drunk driver, but a survivor of one. She said the crash that claimed her friend and mentor has changed her life forever and she will carry the memory of it from now on.

The night of the crash, Morris refused to submit to roadside sobriety tests and would not consent to drawing her blood to test for alcohol, so Key West police sought a warrant for the blood draw and Judge Jones approved it. A Key West paramedic drew a blood sample at the crash site and Morris was released from the scene pending the results.

Police received Morris’ toxicology report from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on April 24, 2017, and it showed her blood alcohol content after the crash was from .173 percent to .175 percent; under Florida law, .08 percent is considered legally under the influence. Morris was arrested on a warrant on May 2, 2017, in North Lauderdale in Broward County and brought back to the Keys to face the charges.

The crash happened about 1:40 a.m. April 8, 2017, at Truman Avenue and White Street. Morris was driving west on Truman and Braswell was traveling east. Morris turned into the path of  the scooter and it overturned. Braswell and Marc were ejected from the scooter and came to rest under the front of the Nissan. Braswell and Marc were taken to Lower Keys Medical Center before both were flown to Ryder for trauma care.

At the crash scene, police noted Morris smelled of alcohol and had “extremely red, glassy, blood-shot eyes.” Inside her car, near the driver’s seat, was a partially smoked marijuana cigarette. One witness at the crash site described Morris as being in a “hysterical state” when she got out of the Nissan.

Braswell, a University of Florida graduate, was a member of Palm Beach County’s SWAT team and a police academy instructor at Broward College. She was also a member of the Delray Beach Police Department’s Honor Guard and a mentor for youths in the department’s Explorer program. Following her death, a group called Delray Citizens for Delray Police established the Christine Braswell Scholarship Fund to help fund education for future police officers.

Dunne, the assistant state attorney, said that although she never met Braswell in life, she grew to know her in death and that “she was a good one, she had a beautiful soul.”

Morris told Braswell’s family “there are no words to describe how sorry I am.”

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