Inset left: Bridgeport Police Officer Cooper Whiteside (State Representative Raghib Allie-Brennan). Inset middle: Melissa Ramirez (Danbury Police Department). Inset right: Brittany Anne Islami (Obituary). Background: A stretch of Sugar Hollow Road in Danbury, Connecticut (Google Maps).
A Connecticut woman is in custody after police said she crashed her Jeep into a motorcycle carrying an off-duty police officer and his girlfriend, leaving both riders dead.
Melissa Ramirez, 27, is facing two counts of second-degree manslaughter with a motor vehicle in connection with the deaths of Bridgeport Police Officer Cooper Whiteside, 38, and Brittany Anne Islami, 34. Danbury police said Ramirez was also charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of drugs or alcohol, driving at an unreasonable speed, and failing to stay in the proper lane, according to a department announcement on Friday.
Ramirez was being held on a $500,000 bond.
The fatal Danbury motorcycle crash happened on July 13 as Whiteside and Islami were riding his Harley-Davidson along Sugar Hollow Road, in a city roughly 65 miles north of Manhattan.
Around 2:45 a.m., investigators say Ramirez was behind the wheel of a Jeep when she struck the motorcycle. Whiteside and Islami were both pronounced dead at the scene, regional ABC affiliate WTNH reported.
Police said Ramirez’s Jeep sustained heavy front-end damage, News 12 Long Island reported. Authorities also said Ramirez had to be extricated from the vehicle before being taken to a hospital with serious injuries.
Islami was remembered in her obituary as a caretaker and personal assistant, and as a mother of three children, ages 12, 10, and 7. Loved ones described her as “always the life of the party” and someone who “lit up every room she walked into,” adding that she was special in a way “only people who truly knew her would understand.”
Whiteside “dreamed of becoming a police officer” from a young age, his own memorial states. “He was a musician (a skilled violinist and piano player), an outdoor enthusiast, certified rescue diver, a handy-man and an epic jokester.”
“After only 2 years on the force, Cooper had made of himself an officer of distinction, never wavering in his purpose to serve and protect with integrity, humility, and compassion,” his obituary adds.
The post Off-duty cop riding Harley-Davidson with mother of 3 smashed into by intoxicated Jeep driver, killing them both: Police first appeared on Law & Crime.
