22-year-old aspiring lawyer shot dead on her birthday after crashing her car into police officers (photos/video)
A 22-year-old woman was shot and killed by police after crashing into an officer with her car.
Cariann Hithon, an aspiring lawyer, had been celebrating her birthday
when she ran a red light and crashed her black BMW into three vehicles
in Miami. Soon after the accident, a crowd gathered around her
car with one man urging her to step out of the car. Another bystander
can be heard laughing that the driver was "drunk as s**t."
But Hithon lunged forwards in an attempt to escape, knocking
one Florida police officer to the ground. Another officer quickly fired
three shots at her. At least one bullet struck her, causing her to lose
control of the car. The car swerved off the road and crashed into
another vehicle down the block. She was taken to a nearby hospital where
she died of her wounds.
The police officer she hit, David Cajuso, has been released from
hospital and is recovering at home, the Miami Beach police department
said. Investigators believe Ms Hithon and her friend, who got out of the
car before she accelerated, had been drinking heavily.
Hithon’s grief-stricken father, Cary Hilton, said the bizarre
circumstances leading up to the police shooting was "out of character"
for his daughter. He told CBS Miami his daughter was an aspiring lawyer
and she "wanted to make a difference in the lives of people who weren't
as fortunate as her."
"You can’t help but have a little bit of despair and anguish behind
something like this because you don’t understand how it could happen,"
Cary Hithon told WFOR-TV.
Ms Hithon had recently transferred from Hampton University in
Virginia to Temple University in Philadelphia and was expected to
graduate with a degree in political sciences. Prosecutors have opened
an inquiry into whether police acted lawfully in shooting and killing Ms
Hithon
