A 22-year-old woman was shot and killed by police after crashing into an officer with her car. Cariann Hithon, an aspiring lawyer, had b...
Cariann Hithon, an aspiring lawyer, had been celebrating her birthday when she ran a red light and crashed her black BMW into three vehicles in Miami. Soon after the accident, a crowd gathered around her car with one man urging her to step out of the car.
But Hithon lunged forwards in an attempt to escape, knocking one Florida police officer to the ground. Another officer quickly fired three shots at her. At least one bullet struck her, causing her to lose control of the car. The car swerved off the road and crashed into another vehicle down the block. She was taken to a nearby hospital where she died of her wounds.
The police officer she hit, David Cajuso, has been released from hospital and is recovering at home, the Miami Beach police department said. Investigators believe Ms Hithon and her friend, who got out of the car before she accelerated, had been drinking heavily.
Hithon’s grief-stricken father, Cary Hilton, said the bizarre circumstances leading up to the police shooting was "out of character" for his daughter. He told CBS Miami his daughter was an aspiring lawyer and she "wanted to make a difference in the lives of people who weren't as fortunate as her."
"You can’t help but have a little bit of despair and anguish behind something like this because you don’t understand how it could happen," Cary Hithon told WFOR-TV.
Ms Hithon had recently transferred from Hampton University in Virginia to Temple University in Philadelphia and was expected to graduate with a degree in political sciences. Prosecutors have opened an inquiry into whether police acted lawfully in shooting and killing Ms Hithon.
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