PARIS, Maine (AP) - A Maine woman accused of being drunk and reading a text message at the time of a double-fatal car crash has been convicted of vehicular manslaughter.
Jurors acquitted 21-year-old Kristina Lowe of West Paris of drunken driving Thursday but returned guilty verdicts for manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident.
Lowe’s father told jurors Wednesday after being arrested and hauled into court to testify that his daughter told him that she’d looked at her phone when she lost control of the vehicle. She’d been given several doses of painkillers before talking with her parents, and later a trooper, at Maine Medical Center.
Two passengers were killed in the crash just after midnight on Jan. 7, 2012, in Paris. The then-18-year-old Lowe and another passenger were injured.
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