Cops: Hit-and-run driver was on errand for mother | ajc.com

An Easter Sunday errand to pick up cake and ice cream put Aimee Michael on a path that would destroy three families, police said Thursday.

Michael, 22, has confessed that she was driving the champagne-colored BMW that set off a chain-reaction crash April 12 that killed four people in one car and a 6-year-old girl in another, authorities said.

A Fulton County magistrate on Thursday denied bond to Michael, a 2008 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh who majored in psychology. Her attorney had asked that she be placed under house arrest with an ankle monitor, but Magistrate James Altman said no.

“If she had come forward and turned herself in I’d probably go along with the [house arrest], but I’m not going to,” Altman said at a hearing Thursday. “She in fact has watched this be on the news for two weeks and has done absolutely nothing to fulfill her responsibility.”

Police said Thursday that Michael drove away from the devastation on Camp Creek Parkway that Easter afternoon.

“She turned around, she went back home and she put the vehicle in the garage,” said Fulton Detective Melissa Parker. “Did not tell her mother. She told her mother that she did not feel well, had a headache, and went to her room.”

Parker said Michael “didn’t tell her family for a couple of days what had happened, and finally, she broke down and told her mother. … To my knowledge, the rest of the family did not know for two days.”

Parker said she did not know why the family didn’t come forward. Michael’s mother and grandmother agreed to go with police Wednesday night and submit to questioning. They will not talk with reporters.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said other family members could face charges.

Michael was charged with five counts of homicide by vehicle, one count of failure to maintain lane and one count of serious injury by vehicle, hit and run.

She was picked up for questioning Wednesday night after an intensive search for the BMW that witnesses had seen leaving the scene of the accident. Police said she confessed early Thursday.

An anonymous tip led police Wednesday to the Michael home on Ailey Avenue in south Fulton. There they found the BMW parked in the driveway. They later searched the home and confiscated the vehicle.

They would not reveal information on repairs made to the BMW or on who did the repairs, saying that information was part of the ongoing investigation.

Michael grew up in Philadelphia with her sister, Ashlei, 23, and parents, Sheila B. and Robert S. Michael.

Sheila Michael teaches second grade at Cascade Elementary School in Atlanta. Robert Michael, who is retired from the military, is working in Saudia Arabia as a military contractor for Northrop Grumman, the family’s lawyer, W. Scott Smith said.

Neighbors said Thursday that the Michael family seemed like the sort of people you would leave your child with.

“I’m flabbergasted,” said Eddie Pressley, who lives down the road.

Will Rumph, who lives three doors from the family, described them as “down to earth.”

Rumph said he recently saw a flier, distributed at a homeowners association meeting, describing the BMW suspected of triggering the accident.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that looks like my neighbor’s car,’ ” Rumph said. He returned home after a business trip Wednesday night to find police in the neighborhood. “I thought, ‘Oh, it couldn’t be.’ And then it was.”

On Easter Sunday, police say, Michael’s car collided with a Mercedes on Camp Creek Parkway near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

They said both vehicles crossed the median. Michael was able to recover, but the Mercedes went out of control and crashed head-on into a Volkswagen.

Killed in the Mercedes were Robert and Delisia Carter, their newborn son, Ethan Blake, and Delisia Carter’s 9-year-old daughter, Kayla.

In the Volkswagen, 6-year-old Morgan Johnson was killed. Her mother, Tracy, 43, survived. She was listed in good condition at Grady Memorial Hospital on Thursday."