MELISSA MARVIN TRIAL
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MANTEO, North Carolina (Court TV) —It was supposed to be paradise. Five teen-age friends planned a spring break trip to the scenic Outer Banks. The vacation ended in tragedy, however, when an SUV ran a red light and crashed into the teens' car. Four of the teens were killed, and a fifth badly injured.

Police said the SUV's driver, a 29-yrear-old waitress named Melissa Lynn Marvin, was drunk, and on Tuesday, she goes on trial for four counts of second-degree murder and a single count of assault with a deadly weapon.

Marvin, who had two prior DWI arrests on her record, faces 17 years in jail for each murder count and another 3 years for the assault charge.

Police allege that Marvin drank several alcoholic beverages at lunch on April 6, 1999 before climbing into her SUV to drive to a concert in Virginia beach. At about 3 p.m., according to police, she ran a traffic signal in the resort community of Kill Devil Hills and slammed into the sedan carrying Shana Lawler, of nearby Colington Harbour, and four of Shana's friends from Medford, New Jersey: Angela McGrady, Amanda Geiger, Megan Blong and Michael Horner. All were 17-year-old high school juniors.

A police officer at the scene described the crash as "an explosion. All I saw was glass flying everywhere." Marvin, who was not seriously hurt in the crash, told the officer at the scene that she had been drinking, but didn't say where or when. She and the teens were rushed to the hospital, where the four girls died.

Tests conducted at the hospital shortly after the wreck showed Marvin's blood alcohol level was .21, nearly three times higher than North Carolina's legal limit of .08. At one point, Marvin told officers she had taken some prescription drugs the morning of the wreck and then had a single margarita at lunch.

Defense attorneys have been close-mouthed about their strategy. In pretrial motions, they failed to get Marvin's statements and blood samples thrown out. They had argued that she was in police custody from the moment she was taken to the hospital, and should have been read her Miranda rights. The judge rejected that argument.

Marvin was arrested in 1991 and 1996 and accused of driving while impaired. She was convicted of lesser charges of reckless driving in both cases. She has been held on $500,000 bail since April.

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