Student Issue, 1993—Sentencing of Driver Who Killed Leslie Meredith Williams

Kent Browning, the driver who struck and killed Leslie Meredith Williams on March 7, 1991, pled guilty on February 18 to DUI charges and was sentenced to five days in jail and payment of $250 in fines and court costs. Campus and area organizations sponsored a march and rally, with the march beginning at Seventeenth Street and ending at the Volunteer Statue. Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Remove Intoxicated Drivers, Minority Student Affairs, and Safe Campuses Now were among the organizations whose members took part. More than two hundred people marched from Seventeenth Street and Cumberland (the site of the 1991 accident) to the Volunteer Statue. Williams’s mother, Christine Ragland, was present, as were Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith and Attorney General Randy Nichols. Dhyana Ziegler, associate professor of broadcasting, indicated that the purpose of the activities was first to protest the sentence imposed, and second, to push for stiffer penalties when a person dies as a result of a drunk driver.