Days after former NFL coach Britt Reid pleaded guilty to driving while under the influence as part of a plea deal for a reduced sentence, the mother of the 5-year-old girl he injured in the crash says she opposes the agreement.
“My family and I are opposed to the plea deal. I don’t think he should receive it,” said Felicia Miller after the 37-year-old former assistant coach for the Kansas City Chiefs, and the son of the current head coach, entered his plea. “We are not OK with it.”
Ms Miller told Good Morning America in an exclusive interview after Monday’s proceedings that her daughter, the now 7-year-old Ariel Young, remains in recovery from the 4 February 2021 car crash that initially sent the girl into a two-week coma.
“She didn’t know who I was, so as I’m trying to touch my baby, like, ‘Hey, baby,’ she was, you know, moving away. And … she didn’t recognise me,” Ms Miller said, describing the scars, both mental and physical, that still haunt her from that crash that happened nearly two years ago.
On that night in February, Ms Miller had been called to assist her cousin and her children who had broken down on the side of the road near an entrance ramp to Interstate 435, not far from the GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium where the Kansas City Chiefs practise.
While the mother was outside helping her relative, the driver of a pickup truck came barrelling into the two parked vehicles. Ariel, then 5 years old, had been waiting in the backseat of her mother’s car.
“I was just freaking out and then finally, we find her, because she’s buried under the seats,” said Ms Miller to GMA. “When I got her outta the car, she was stiff … she was just stiff like a board.”
Ms Miller rushed her daughter to a nearby hospital where they would determine that, among other injuries, she had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury.
She was in a coma for nearly two weeks after the crash, awaking on 16 February 2021. But even in those early days, her mom admits, they could tell she wasn’t the same girl who had been placed in the backseat the night of the crash.
“She didn’t remember the wreck or anything, so she just woke up seeing her pictures and a whole bunch of videos from before [and she compares those to] now, like, ‘Why am I like this?’ is how she thinks,” Ms Miller said.
It wasn’t till after the crash that the family would learn that Mr Reid, who was let go from the Kansas City Chiefs days after the accident, was the man behind the wheel that night.
Officers who obtained a search warrant for the scene, according to ABC News, reported that night that they’d smelt “a moderate odor of alcoholic beverages emanating from [Reid].” The former assistant coach informed officers that he’d reportedly had “2-3 drinks” and was on the prescription drug “Adderall.”
His blood alcohol concentration, taken nearly two hours after the crash, came back at 0.113, the statement said, according to The New York Times. The legal limit to operate a motor vehicle in Missouri is 0.08.
Ariel remained in hospital for two months after the crash, but new details of her recovery are sparse, as in November 2021, the Kansas City franchise came to a confidential settlement to cover her ongoing medical treatment and provide “long-term financial stability”.
A GoFundMe organised by a friend on behalf of the mother, who has two other children at home including a baby, collected over $580,000.
Mr Reid, who will be sentenced in late October, faces a maximum sentence of four years in prison. The judge presiding over the case has the authority to give the 37-year-old – who previously pleaded guilty to driving under the influence in 2008 – a lighter sentence of just 120 days in jail and place him under probation for five years.
In a statement shared with ABC, the attorney representing Mr Reid, J R Hobbs, said that his client “has accepted responsibility for his conduct,” and added that “Mr Reid continues to be remorseful for his conduct and hopes that his plea brings some sense of justice to all he has afffected.”
The attorney representing the family, who have been left to pick up the pieces of the young girl’s recovery, says they feel there are two levels of justice at play.
“I think the family is upset, because they perceive a different system of justice for those who have privilege and those who don't, those who have privilege and those people from the victim's community,” said Tom Porto, the family's attorney, in an interview with GMA.
“If anybody else had did that — if we had did that, any of us hit his car, being drunk and hitting his car, injuring one of his kids, we’d be in jail,” Ms Miller added.
The sentencing for Mr Reid will take place on 28 October in a Jackson County Circuit Court.
