AUSTIN -- The woman who hit two pedestrians Sunday night, killing one and critically injuring another, is in the Travis County Jail on a $55,000 bond.
According to court papers, Linda Dianne Woodman, 59, told police she hit a pothole and lost control. She said her brakes wouldn't work. Witnesses say they could hear her engine racing the entire time.
Woodman is charged with intoxication manslaughter in the death of Dik Van Meerten, 61. Van Meerten didn't live in Austin but was visiting his son. Police say he died immediately.
Woodman is also charged with intoxication assault for hitting and injuring Sarah Parker, 21. Parker is in the hospital with a fractured jaw, shoulder, and leg. Doctors also had to surgically reattach one of her ears.
Woodman told police she had been in the hospital the afternoon of the crash. She says doctors gave her doses of morphine and percocet.
According to police, Woodman crashed into another car on Guadalupe Street at 31st Street around 7 p.m. Sunday. The crash set off a deadly chain.
Police say Woodman veered into oncoming traffic and jumped a curb, taking out street signs, flower pots, a Capital Metro bus bench, and bike racks. Her Lexus SUV skid along the side of the Wheatsville Co-op. She then hit both Parker and Van Meerten just outside the grocery store.
Woodman didn’t stop. She veered back into oncoming traffic. The bus bench and bike racks skid across the road, still stuck underneath her SUV.
Woodman eventually stopped when she went up a curb again and crashed, wedging her vehicle between two poles at 30th Street.
The Austin Police Department’s DWI enforcement unit interviewed Woodman immediately after the crash and conducted several field sobriety tests.
Officer Rolando Ramirez says she appeared sleepy and wobbly. In her arrest papers he writes she had glassy and bloodshot eyes. Officers called in drug recognition expert Officer Jennifer Taylor to evaluate Woodman.
Taylor documented that Woodman’s intoxication was due to the effects of the drugs she admitted to taking earlier in the day.
Woodman was charged with intoxication manslaughter, a second degree felony, and intoxication assault, a third degree felony. This was Austin's ninth traffic fatality of 2012.
