Highway 365 in rural Mississippi (Google Maps). Inset: Brittany Norris (Tishomingo County sheriff’s Office).
Brittany Norris of Tennessee will spend the next 40 years of her life in prison after a judge handed down the sentence for her role in a 2021 drunk driving incident that killed a 13-year-old boy and left that child’s mother and sister with permanent injuries.
John Weddle of the First Circuit District Attorney’s Office announced the decadeslong sentence on Aug. 6 on Facebook.
Though the incident occurred in Mississippi, Norris, 36, is from Counce, Tennessee.
Norris was operating her vehicle under the influence on Sept. 20, 2021, in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, when she crashed nearly head-on into her victim’s vehicle on Mississippi’s Highway 365.
She pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated DUI.
According to a 2021 report by local Mississippi news outlet Daily Journal, Mississippi Highway Patrol said officials responded to the scene of the crash in rural Tishomingo close to 8:47 p.m. on Sept. 20.
Police said Norris was driving south on a two-lane road when her 2011 Ford Explorer crashed almost head-on into a 2014 Ford Escape driven by Melissa Walker, a 44-year-old mother from Iuka, Mississippi. The collision caused Walker’s car to emerge onto the east side of the highway. After the crash, Norris’s car was left in the middle of the highway.
The Daily Journal reported that passengers inside Walker’s car included her college-age daughter Macie Walker — then a student at the University of North Alabama — and her son, Michael Walker, then a student in seventh grade at Iuka Middle School. He was 13.
The boy was fatally injured in the crash and later died at an area hospital; the boy’s mother was badly injured and needed surgery. Macie Walker was seriously hurt but survived.
The outlet reported on Thursday that Norris will also pay roughly $17,000 in restitution plus another $1,400 in penalties and fines.
The maximum sentence for an aggravated DUI charge in Mississippi is 25 years and for the death of the 13-year-old boy, Norris received that max sentence. For the other two counts, Norris also received the maximum sentence with all but 15 years suspended. The sentences are to be served consecutively and when she is finally released from prison, if she violates terms of her five-year supervised release period, a court could make her serve the suspended sentences as well.
In an obituary for Michael Walker, his family described him a “bright light in this world taken too soon” and that he loved playing basketball and fishing and hunting with his father.
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