After a night of partying, a dancer with a troubling driving record left a club "stumbling drunk" before she jumped into her car and hit and killed three teenage boys waiting at a bus stop in North Miami, prosecutors said.
Mariam Coulibaly, a 31-year-old dancer from Hollywood, was arrested and charged in connection with the May 25 crash that killed 17-year-old Richecarde Dumay, 15-year-old Lens Desir, and 13-year-old Gedeon Desir. The young soccer players were on their way to a tournament in Weston.
"She wiped out those three lives," a prosecutor said a Coulibaly's bond court hearing Thursday. The defendant, who was sitting in a wheelchair, was booked and processed into jail only the day before because she was in the hospital recovering from the injuries she sustained from the crash.
According to the arrest report, Coulibaly was partying on Miami Beach and then went to a strip club on Biscayne Boulevard. Video surveillance from that night shows her drinking alcohol and stumbling while she walked.
"She was leaving, stumbling drunk," the prosecutor said.
Coulibaly was driving at around 5:22 a.m. when she lost control of her Hyundai Tucson while crossing the train tracks at NE 14th Avenue. She jumped the curb of the sidewalk and struck the boys, officers said in the arrest form.
All three of the teens died at the scene from blunt-force trauma, the medical examiner's officer determined.
Officers noted Coulibaly reeked of alcohol as she sat in the driver's seat of her car. Detectives later found a half-empty bottle of Patron tequila and two grams of marijuana inside her Louis Vuitton purse.
Toxicology results revealed she had a 0.15 blood alcohol level, nearly twice the legal limit.
Coulibaly faces three counts of DUI manslaughter and three counts of vehicular homicide. Her bond was set at $300,000, with the additional conditions of total lockdown house arrest with a GPS ankle monitor bracelet and an alcohol monitoring bracelet. Coulibaly, if she makes monetary bond, also cannot drive, take drugs or drink alcohol, must submit to random drug testing and must surrender her passport.
The NBC 6 Investigators found Coulibaly has a troubling driving record: she was ticketed for leaving the scene of an accident, going 77 mph in a 35 mph zone, and was involved in four crashes between 2013 and 2015. Her license was first suspended in Broward County back in 2017 for not paying fines. It was suspended a second time in Miami-Dade County the next year for the same reason.
Both suspensions were indefinite, the NBC 6 Investigators found, meaning she should not have been behind the wheel.
"This defendant has a demonstrated history of a complete disregard for the safety of other people," the prosecutor said.
Local
Hundreds gathered Thursday night at Little Haiti to remember Richechard, Lens and Gedeon, whose families all came from Haiti to the U.S. They were all members of the Little Haiti Football Club.
"These exceptional young men were brought together by a love for soccer and a will to succeed together," Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said.
