NASHVILLE — A woman was arrested Friday, June 4, and is facing several felony charges after she crashed her car into the Brown County IGA grocery store on Hawthorne Drive killing her passenger.
According to police Brown County Sheriff’s Department deputies responded to the accident after a report of a vehicle inside the store and someone trapped in the wreckage.
Court documents obtained Friday say that sometime on June 4, Brown County sheriff’s deputies were sent to 30 Hawthorne Drive, which is the address of the Brown County IGA grocery store, on a report of a vehicle driving into the store with someone trapped in the wreckage.
When investigators arrived, the driver of the 2003 Chevy Trailblazer, 41-year-old Amanda Beaver, 41, was found sitting by the vehicle with an injured ankle.
Officers reportedly observed Beaver sitting down by the vehicle with “glassy eyes, a blank distant stare, and sluggish, clumsy movement”. Beaver “shrugged her shoulders” and said “I don’t know” what happened.
Police found her passenger 64-year-old Randal Darrell Duncan dead and trapped inside the vehicle.
Witnesses told police Beaver’s vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed and drove into the IGA. Investigators reported Beaver did not break or attempt to avoid the building.
Emergency services pronounced Duncan dead at the scene. Amanda Beaver was transported by ambulance to IU Bloomington Hospital for treatment.
While at the hospital, Beaver’s blood was drawn for a toxicology test. Those results are pending.
The next day, investigators obtained security camera footage from a bank near the IGA, which showed Beaver’s Chevy Trailblazer traveling toward the store before leaving the camera’s view.
After Beaver was released from the hospital, Beaver was arrested on charges of operating a vehicle while intoxicated causing death, causing serious bodily injury, and reckless homicide. She also faces three misdemeanor charges of operating a vehicle while intoxicated and OWI endangerment, criminal mischief, and criminal recklessness.
She is being held in the Brown County Jail on a $100,000 bond.
A jury trial was scheduled for 8 a.m. on August 9, 2023.
An IGA representative said the damage was mostly to office space and no product was damaged.
Beaver was also behind the wheel when her car rammed into a Speedway gas station on March 26.
According to investigators, Beaver told officers she was suffering from a mental health crisis and intentionally started a fire in her car before backing into a fuel pump and then driving through the building. She admitted to taking an “unknown” amount of prescription medication before the incident.
