Cop charged with drunk driving after passenger dies

Police have levied charges against one of their own following a traffic accident that claimed the life of a Cayo woman. Twenty-three year old Police Constable Sherard Lawrence has been charged with manslaughter by negligence, causing death by careless conduct, driving without due care and attention, and operating a motor vehicle with alcohol concentration above the prescribed limit. On March twenty-second, Lawrence was giving twenty year old Marleni Montero a ride home from work when between miles sixty-nine and seventy on the Western Highway he lost control of the car and it overturned. Montero sustained severed head and body injuries and was in a coma for several days before succumbing to her wounds on Tuesday. While Lawrence told police that he was blinded by the lights of an oncoming vehicle, Montero’s family has maintained that the accident occurred because the officer had been drinking and tried to overtake another vehicle on a blind curve.