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Amber Peery guilty on five counts in accident involving three Girl Scouts from Topeka

A Shawnee County District Court jury found Topekan Amber Peery guilty Thursday of all charges against her, including five felonies related to an October 2022 traffic crash that killed three Girl Scouts on the Kansas Turnpike near Auburn.

The verdict came after three hours and 40 minutes of deliberation on what would have been the 11th birthday of one of the victims, Kylie Lunn.

Three of Peery's passengers died, including one of her daughters, and two others were injured, including her other daughter, when a tractor-trailer struck the rear driver's side of the van Peery was driving at 9:07 a.m. on October 8, 2022.

The accident occurred as Peery attempted to turn in front of the tractor-trailer to get through an opening in the guardrail on the turnpike, witnesses testified at trial this week.

A jury of eight men and four women found Peery guilty of three counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of aggravated assault and one count each of failing to maintain a lane and making a U-turn on a highway at the end of the four-day trial on Thursday afternoon.

The manslaughter charge is related to a traffic accident on October 8, 2022, on the Kansas Turnpike near Auburn that killed Laila El Azri Ennassari and Kylie Lunn, both 9, and Brooklyn Peery, 8. Brooklyn was the daughter of Amber Peery.

Amber Peery and her two other passengers – her daughter Carrington Peery, then 5, and Gabriella Ponomarez, then 9 – suffered injuries but survived. The aggravated assault convictions were related to the injuries they sustained.

What should the jury consider?

To convict Peery of manslaughter and/or aggravated assault, jurors would have to find that she drove recklessly and knowingly, thereby posing a substantial and unreasonable danger to others, jurors were told.

Jurors would also have to conclude that Peery's conduct “represented a gross departure from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe under the same circumstances” to convict her on those charges, they were told.

The jury was told that in reaching their verdict they would also have to consider the fault or lack of fault of the other driver involved, 72-year-old Robert Russell of Huntsville, Alabama.

The jury was given the option of convicting Peery of manslaughter, a felony, or the lesser crime of involuntary manslaughter, a misdemeanor.

What happened in the crash?

Testimony at this week's trial revealed that Amber Peery was part of a caravan of three drivers heading to a Girl Scout event in Tonganoxie when they headed south on the Kansas Turnpike from the Topeka South Junction.

Witnesses say two drivers realized they were going the wrong way and turned around, making a U-turn through an opening in the guardrail of a toll road between the north and south lanes.

One of those drivers then asked Peery by cell phone to also find a place to turn around. There are no exits between the South Topeka interchange and the Admire interchange on the turnpike, 30 miles southwest.

Video shown at Peery's preliminary hearing showed her attempting to turn from the right southbound lane into the left southbound lane of the turnpike and drive through an opening in the guardrail, but her SUV was struck in the area of ​​the rear quarter panel on the driver's side by a semi-truck driven by Russell.

Russell testified at Amber Peery's preliminary hearing that he was traveling south in the right lane when he saw Peery's van ahead of him on the right shoulder. He then moved into the left lane heading south.

Peery's defense attorneys questioned Russell's credibility, pointing out that a video taken from Russell's truck looking forward showed that Peery turned from the right southbound lane rather than the right shoulder and that she used her left turn signal before turning.

Contact Tim Hrenchir at [email protected] or 785-213-5934.

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