A Florida drawbridge operator who killed a grandmother when she prematurely raised the spans has been sent to jail after violating her probation.
Artissua Lafay Paulk, 46, opened the Royal Park Bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway on February 6, 2022 as 79-year-old victim Carol Wright was still walking across with her bicycle.
It caused Wright, a retired newspaper editor who was riding back from a bookstore, to plunge 50 feet to her death landing on a concrete slab.
Paulk pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to eight years of probation and 200 hours of community service.
However, she found herself back in the courtroom on Tuesday after she violated probation.
Court records obtained by CBS 12 show she violated her probation when she failed a drug test, did not complete mandatory community service and didn’t pay court fines.
Paulk admitted to the court she violated the terms of her probation and her attorney argued that she was making progress and is a ‘different person now,’ as they pleaded for her probation to be reinstated.
Prosecutors requested that she be sentenced to 15 years in prison, and the judge ultimately sentenced her to 10 years behind bars.
Paulk was operating a bridge that connects West Palm Beach and Palm Beach when she opened the bridge to let a boat pass in 2022.
After lowering its entrance barriers, she was supposed to go outside the bridge tender’s station and make sure no cars, pedestrians or bicyclists were on it.
The operator originally told police she had checked the bridge, but surveillance video and text messages she sent to her boss immediately after Wright’s fall show she had not.
As well as texting her friend, she also reportedly spoke to her supervisor Kathie Harper who happens to be her mother-in-law.
Harper instructed Paulk to tell officers she checked the bridge three times before lifting it which bridge tenders are required to do, the affidavit said.
She then asked Paulk to delete the messages which she did. Both were fired.
The victim was within 10 feet of reaching safety when the drawbridge started to go up at around 1pm.
A Good Samaritan, who witnessed the incident, raced to Wright’s aid and tried to pull her to safety but lost his grip.
She slipped through the gap formed by the rising bridge and the main roadway and desperately tried to cling on, before falling more than five stories to the concrete base of the 1,238-foot span over the Intercoastal Waterway.
At the time West Palm Beach Police Spokesperson Mike Jachles said: ‘The woman tried to hang on. There was a bystander nearby who tried to help her, but tragically she fell five or six stories below where she died landing on concrete.’
Florida Drawbridges, the private contractor that operates the government-owned span, paid Wright’s family $8 million to settle a lawsuit.