A woman who allegedly drove in the wrong lane on a Beltline frontage road last year, killing the driver of a moped, was charged Wednesday with homicide by intoxicated driving and homicide by negligent driving.
Ekaterina Topolkaraeva, 27, of Madison, had alcohol and morphine in her body after she was involved in a crash on Oct. 8 that killed MATC student Jeffrey L. Droster, 37, of Madison, according to a criminal complaint.
Topolkaraeva was ordered to appear in court Thursday. In addition to the driving homicide charges, she was also charged with possession of drug paraphernalia.
According to the complaint:
Police were called to the Beltline about 3 a.m. on Oct. 8 for what was described as a pedestrian who had been struck by a vehicle.
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Officers saw debris in the frontage road on the south side of the Beltline, then looked over a retaining wall and saw Droster laying on the Beltline.
Topolkaraeva was stopped by police a short distance away. She told police she had just hit someone on a motorcycle, and officers saw damage to the front end of her car and a black moped jammed under her car.
Topolkaraeva told police that she believed she was traveling eastbound on the Beltline, and not on the frontage road, when the collision occurred. She said she had had two glasses of champagne, but had a preliminary breath test result of 0.071, just under the legal alcohol limit for drivers in Wisconsin.
A crash analysis by the State Patrol found that Topolkaraeva's car was actually being driven eastbound on the frontage road and had veered across the road and collided with the moped in the westbound lane.
Police also learned that Topolkaraeva carried a small makeup kit that contained supplies for injecting heroin. Officer Deanna Reilly found it two days after the crash, under a shrub a few feet off the road, not far from the crash scene.
In a search warrant filed in October, a passenger who was in Topolkaraeva's car told police that Topolkaraeva had injected a substance believed to be heroin. Heroin breaks down into morphine in the body.
(c)2012 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.)
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