Wedding Turned Deadly | The Heartbreaking Case of Samantha Miller and Jamie Komoroski

A bride fatally mowed down by an alleged drunk driver on her wedding day. The wedding was beautiful. The couple was so in love. They were just starting the rest of their lives together.

“Police said she was driving 65 mph in a 25 mph zone with a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit.”

“Can I call my dad?”

“Not right now. ‘Cuz you’re under arrest.”

“Hi.”

The driver who mowed down a bride and groom on their wedding night begged for mercy as she admitted she was drunk.

“Hopefully one day you will be able to forgive me, but I know forgiveness must be earned.”

Your wedding day is supposed to be the happiest day of your life, right? You’re marrying your best friend, the person that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. You’re surrounded by friends, family, people just showering you with well-wishes and happy thoughts and it’s supposed to be like the peak moment. And I say that knowing that of course childbirth becomes next runner up and all the things that follow. But my point is getting married and your wedding day, it’s definitely in the highlight reel.

Okay, we know that it is like a very important day. And Samantha Miller and Eric Hutchinson, for them, their wedding day was exactly that. So happy, so blissful, so joyful. And it was a magical celebration of their love. They were surrounded by everyone that they loved in their lives. They were about to start their lives together. They were in one of their most favorite places in the entire world. Just surrounded and enveloped in love. And it ended disastrously. Not because somebody objected. Not because some mistress or what would you—what’s the equivalent of a guy? Like mister, I guess, whatever. Not because somebody came crashing down the wedding, not because a jealous ex came, but rather because of the actions of one incredibly irresponsible woman, someone who didn’t know it at the time, but because of her actions and her recklessness, she was about to destroy not only this perfect wedding day, but so many lives that were affected through the ripple effect of Samantha and Eric. Within a matter of moments, because of Jaime Komoroski, this once fairy tale life, it turned into an absolute nightmare, leaving one newlyweds dead and the other widowed. And this was within literally of just hours of saying, “I do.”

Now, what seemed like a pretty straightforward drunk driving case at the time, it quickly evolved into a case that absolutely captured the public’s attention. And a big reason for that was because of this woman’s attitude, Jaime’s attitude. After the crash, her jail calls were released. And they painted a picture of someone who didn’t seem very remorseful, but was more concerned with how this was going to affect her life, how her life was now in shambles. Very reminiscent, I have to say, of McKenzie Shirilla. And after hearing a lot of these jail calls, a lot of people were left wondering whether or not Jaime would ever fully understand the devastation that she caused.

Now, when I first covered this case back in 2023, we walked through everything together. Sam and Eric’s love story, the wedding, the absolutely devastating and senseless crash that changed so many people’s lives. And I also broke down everything that happened in the immediate aftermath of the crash, including Jaime’s behavior at the scene—at this horrific accident scene—infamous jail calls, which don’t worry, we’re going to get into those, and so much other stuff that happened that sparked complete public outrage.

However, that was a couple of years ago, and at that point, there still were a lot of unanswered questions. The biggest one being obviously, you know, what’s going to happen to Jaime now? This wasn’t just a cut and dry DUI case here. Somebody lost their life. This was way reckless when you get into the details of just how much alcohol had been consumed, how the events transpired, which again, we’ll get to all of that. But the question was like, what kind of punishment was she actually going to get? And more broadly, what does justice even look like in a case like this where someone may possibly not intentionally set out to hurt somebody else, but because of their actions? Because of their carelessness and their choices being so reckless and so selfish and so destructive, they ended up causing the worst kind of pain imaginable.

And look, the chaos in the public wasn’t just because of Jaime and whether or not she had remorse. There also became a huge legal battle between Sam’s family and Eric, challenging the validity of the marriage, fighting over money, last names, the legality of it all. It is incredibly messy, very toxic, and there is so much that we need to get into.

Now, on top of that, the last time I covered this case, there were also lawsuits flying in every single direction. Tons of questions about how the surviving victims were supposed to move forward with this with all of these massive physical and emotional injuries. And it was just chaos. That is the best way to describe it.

So, like I said, since then, a lot has happened. And we finally now have answers to so many of the questions that I had back then. So, with that, it felt like the right time to reopen this case—not to only update you on where this case has now gone, what has happened, and where it stands today, but also to bring back Sam and Eric’s story back to the forefront and remind people of the absolutely devastating consequences that drinking and driving can cause.

So, my plan today, like all reopened cases, is we’re going to revert back to my 2023 deep dive. I’m going to take a few pieces from that while also dropping in some real time updates with you right now just so that way you have the full total picture, total story, all the details, all the calls, all you know, every single thing so that you know it backwards and forwards because it’s been a few years and also because if you’re watching the video version of this, you can see that I’m traveling right now because my equipment has changed a little bit over the years. You may notice slight differences in audio quality. However, I think we’ve gotten to a point where we pretty much seamlessly have been able to blend them together. But because equipment has changed over time, sometimes, you know, it’s unavoidable, but just I do that and I splice them together again with the goal in mind, I should say, to really just give you the full comprehensive overview of the case.

So, if you’re watching the video version of this, you’ll see a little bit of old Annie on the screen. Then you’re going to see present tense Annie on the screen, a little bit of time travel action, but um just wanted to, you know, let you know that in advance. So, with all of that being said, we have a lot to get into. Today we are reopening the case of Sam and Eric Hutchinson. Let me get right into it.

36-year-old Eric Hutchinson was born on March 23rd, 1987 to his parents, Irvin and Annette Hutchinson. Eric is the youngest of three with an older brother named Adam and an older sister named Alexis. Eric grew up in Ogden, Utah, and played football in high school before going on to play as a defensive back for Snow College and Utah Tech. In college, he majored in communications with an emphasis on business organization, which really prepared him for his career as a sales manager for a construction company called Tucker Kirby. Tucker Kirby deals with concrete and masonry for residential, commercial, and industrial buildings.

Eric often traveled for work to meet with prospective clients. And on one of these work trips, Eric was winding down for the night by grabbing a drink at the hotel bar where he was staying. There he saw a beautiful woman with dark brown hair, brown eyes, and a smile that lit up the entire room. So, he decided to pull up a chair next to hers and quickly found out that this gorgeous woman’s name was Samantha Miller. And she was also staying at that hotel on a business trip.

34-year-old Samantha Miller, who went by Sam, was born on March 27th, 1989. She had two older siblings, Joseph and Mandy, and two younger brothers named Nathan and Jake. Samantha’s mother, Lisa Miller, said that in the summer of 1988, she met a man named Brad Warner. Lisa and Brad ended up having a one night stand and Lisa became pregnant. Even though they weren’t together, Brad and Lisa don’t see this unexpected pregnancy as a mistake because it led to them sharing Samantha, which is one of the biggest blessings in their lives. Sam took Lisa’s last name, but Brad was involved in raising her along with Lisa’s ex-husband, David Miller.

When asked to describe Sam in one word, people have used the word “light” because of how much joy and how much happiness she brought to everyone’s lives. She had this infectious laugh and was one of those people who would become your best friend from the moment that you met her. From a young age, Sam was an empathetic and compassionate child, which carried over into adulthood. She always wanted to make sure that everyone was taken care of and felt loved.

Sam made friends everywhere she went, but her best friend was undoubtedly her mother, Lisa. Everyone had heard Sam say her favorite quote, “Love you more,” countless times. And she and Lisa even got matching tattoos of that phrase.

After graduating high school, Sam attended East Coast Polytech Institute, also known as ECPI. ECPI has programs focusing on science, technology, health systems, business, criminal justice, and the culinary arts as well. People who knew Sam called her a true free spirit and said that she was the type of person who loved to just start over and reinvent herself all the time.

After graduating college, she worked as a medical assistant and then in an orthodontist office. After that, she wanted to switch gears and she got into marketing before landing and excelling in sales enablement for a company called Indexic. Indexic specializes in online booking and reservation software. So Sam would travel to train and coach sales team members for this company.

On one of her work trips to Utah, she was approached in that hotel bar where she was staying by Eric Hutchinson. So Eric and Samantha struck up a conversation and they talked for hours in this hotel bar. Eric was captivated not only by how beautiful Sam was, but her intelligence and her sharp sense of humor as well. At the end of the night, the two of them exchanged numbers and then headed to their respective hotel rooms.

Sam immediately called her mom and told her about how she had just met this amazing guy, but she didn’t think that she would ever see him again because they were both just staying at that hotel for work. But surprisingly, that ended up not being the case. The next morning, Sam heard a knock on her door, and when she opened it, Eric was standing there with four drinks from Starbucks, and he told her that he wasn’t sure what kind of coffee she liked, so he brought her a variety. The two of them drank their coffee together before having to part ways for work. But Eric asked Sam if she would have dinner with him, and she of course was eager and accepted.

Even though Sam had been afraid that she’d probably never talk to Eric again, they ended up speaking every single day after they met. When COVID hit, they knew that they wouldn’t be able to travel back and forth very much. So Sam decided to move to Utah to live with Eric.

Even though Sam grew up in North Carolina, when she was a little girl, her family took a vacation to a city just south of Charleston, South Carolina called Folly Beach. Sam fell in love with the small eclectic island and she knew that she wanted to live there someday. So Eric and Sam decided to start their lives together in Charleston along with their two cats. They got an apartment on the nearby James Island specifically because of its close proximity to Folly Beach. It was like all of Sam’s dreams were just coming true right in front of her eyes.

Everyone who knew Eric and Sam thought that they were the perfect couple and that their love story was like a fairy tale romance. Eric was said to be pretty much the male version of Sam, just kind, funny, and authentic. And life only got better after Eric popped the question. And their engagement brought excitement to both of their families who had never seen either of them more happy.

Sam and Eric didn’t have to think about where they would get married for very long. It was an obvious no-brainer that they would get married on Folly Beach, which has always been Sam’s favorite place, and was also becoming Eric’s as well. They would go there almost every day to walk or run on the beach, lay out, or just to catch the sunrise or the sunset.

There were several options for venues, but Sam chose the one that would be closest to the ocean. At the very tip of Folly Beach, where the island dead ends into the Atlantic Ocean, there is a beautiful secluded wedding venue called the Pelican Watch Pavilion. The beautiful open air pavilion overlooks the ocean shoreline known as the Edge of America. Couples often have their wedding ceremonies on the beach and then walk that elevated boardwalk back up to the pavilion for their receptions.

Even though all of Sam and Eric’s family members lived out of state, along the beach were countless short-term rentals and Airbnbs and beautiful hotels for everybody to stay in. So, they planned it and they set their wedding date for Friday, April 28th, 2023. And the weekend was going to be a family and friend reunion, a mini vacation, and a party to celebrate these two people who were madly in love with each other.

Leading up toward the wedding, Eric and Sam chose their food, their songs, their wedding bands, and the decorations. Sam went dress shopping with her mom and her best friend, Ashley, who was also going to be by her side on the beach as her maid of honor.

When it was finally the week of their wedding, family and friends started making their way into town. The night of their rehearsal dinner, many of Sam and Eric’s loved ones were just meeting each other for the first time. But it was like their connection to the couple made everyone feel like they had known each other for years. Just two amazing families and friends just merging together.

Now, the day of their wedding though started with a little bit of a hiccup. Even though it’s said to be good luck, no one wants it to rain on their wedding day, especially if your wedding is outside and on the beach. The forecast on Folly Beach said that it was going to rain that day. But Sam didn’t freak out. She was the exact opposite of a bridezilla and she remained calm as if she knew that somehow the day was just going to turn out perfect anyway. And she was right. Throughout the morning and early afternoons, any clouds that were in the sky just slowly disappeared.

Sam, her mom Lisa, her sister Mandy, and the rest of the bridal party spent the morning and the afternoon eating charcuterie, drinking mimosas, and just getting so excited for the wedding. Even before she got her makeup done, Sam had an obvious glow about her.

The ceremony was set to begin a little after 5:00 p.m., and at around 4:00 p.m., guests started arriving at the beach, taking their sides for the bride and the groom. The weather ended up being absolutely perfect. It was slightly overcast and around 75°.

Sam had planned everything to a tee, but the one thing that she waited until the last minute to do was to write down her vows. She knew what she wanted to say, but she wanted them to be written perfectly. So, minutes before she was supposed to walk down the aisle, Sam laid down on her stomach in the back of her dad’s 4Runner so that no one would see her in her dress, and she wrote down her vows. Mandy later said that she expected her sister to be a little bit nervous, but that Sam was as peaceful and fearless as ever, smiling from ear to ear. There were no cold feet or even typical wedding jitters. She just couldn’t wait to get down the aisle and marry her person, the love of her life, Eric.

Eric stood at the end of the aisle facing the ocean underneath a beautiful wooden arch in front of over a hundred of his and Sam’s family and friends. Sam’s bridal party walked down the aisle in different style dresses that matched the blush pink, green, and orange floral decorations, and everyone was completely blown away when Sam made her way toward Eric. She was always beautiful, but she truly looked angelic in her form-fitting white lace wedding dress.

Eric and Sam tearfully read each other their vows before officially being pronounced Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson. Their family and friends cheered during their first kiss as husband and wife, and the reception to follow was just as perfect as the ceremony.

While the bridal party took their photos, their guests enjoyed a cocktail hour. Sam and Eric’s entrance led right into their first dance, which was to the song “You Move, I Move” by John Legend. Next, Sam did a father-daughter dance with both of the men who raised her, her biological father, Brad, and her stepdad, David.

The reception was just as carefree and fun as Eric and Sam were. They served their guests tacos and had a huge spread of desserts, including their five-layer pineapple and coconut wedding cake that Sam’s sister Mandy had actually made for them. And everyone spent the rest of the night dancing, laughing, singing, and it could not have been more perfect.

After the reception, the plan was for Eric’s brother-in-law, Ben, to drive the newlyweds to their Airbnb, which was really just a few miles down the road. The rest of the family were also staying in rentals along that same long strip of Folly Beach, and they would all get together again in the morning after resting from a long but memorable day. So, before they left, everyone made a little walkway, holding sparklers on both sides for Eric and Sam to walk through as they made their exit. They shared one more kiss at the end before hopping on to an LSV, which is a low-speed vehicle, and it’s kind of basically just like a street legal version of a golf cart. And then they headed out.

And we’ve all seen people riding in golf carts, Segways, scooters, or other little vehicles in beach towns, which makes it easier for tourists to get from place to place and even locals to get around without having to rent a car. And this is why the speed limit on beach strips and tourist little towns is usually so low. On the back of the golf cart, there was a little “Just Married” sign hanging off the bumper. Eric’s brother-in-law, Ben Garrett, and his 17-year-old nephew, Brogan Garrett, sat in the front seats of the golf cart, and Eric and Sam sat on the back so that they could wave goodbye to their guests as they drove down the road.

“Where’s the people behind us?”

Right as they left the parking lot, Sam turned to Eric and said, “I wish that this night never had to end.”

And that was the last thing that Eric remembers Sam saying to him before their lives changed forever.

Less than two miles away from the wedding at the Pelican Watch Pavilion is a road called Center Street. Center Street is known as the main drag of Folly Beach. It’s where all of the main shops and restaurants are located and where beach bars and rooftop clubs light up the island’s nightlife. Young adults from surrounding cities come to Center Street to bar hop. And that’s exactly what 25-year-old Jaime Komoroski was doing that Friday night in April.

Jaime was born on September 15th, 1997 to parents Charles and Tracy Komoroski. She is the middle child with an older sister named Kelsey and a younger brother named CJ. Jaime and her siblings grew up in Clinton, New Jersey, where they were an extremely close and tight-knit family. She was especially known to be a daddy’s girl. And even though she was definitely a little spoiled by her parents, people who know Jaime have said that she has a very big heart.

In high school, Jaime played sports like lacrosse. She liked to snowboard and has always been a competitive athlete. After high school, she was accepted into Coastal Carolina University. There she joined a sorority and held several jobs in the food service industry. She worked at a daycare, she interned at a real estate company, kind of dabbled in a bunch of different things.

Now, Jaime was definitely known to be a party girl and had a very busy social life, but she managed to remain on the dean’s list with a 4.0 grade point average through college. She graduated with a degree in hotel, resort, and tourism management and ended up landing a job with a company called Total Quality Logistics. Jaime worked as a logistics account executive and met her current boyfriend, Evan Tatro, over there at that company as well.

In April 2023, she left her job at the logistics company to go work at a restaurant called Taco Boy just off Center Street on Folly Beach. Like Sam and Eric, Jaime lived on James Island and only had completed two days of training at the restaurant just a couple minutes from the house that she shared with some friends.

On Friday, April 28th, Jaime headed to a Mexican restaurant called El Gallo Bar and Grill, which is located near Daniel Island at about a 25-minute drive. I looked up this restaurant, which is in this kind of isolated, sketchy industrial area kind of, and I know a lot of the best and most authentic restaurants can sometimes look a little bit questionable on the outside, but I was trying to figure out why Jaime would make a nearly 30-minute drive when there are so many great places to go much closer. Maybe some of her friends asked her to go out to dinner or maybe it’s one of their hangout spots because on their Facebook you can tell that inside it’s definitely a lot of fun. They have two dance floors. One is outside on this really cool patio area. And they do salsa dancing and have parties. They also have thirsty Thursdays and on Fridays they have karaoke and free tequila shots.

With free tequila shots, margarita specials and karaoke, it makes sense why Jaime and her friends would like to go there. And Jaime has said that at Taco Boy, the restaurant where she had recently been hired, it was really the common place for the employees to meet up after work or go on their days off to just party on Center Street together. She said that everyone from managers to servers go together. And if you want to get closer to the higher-ups, you should definitely hang out with them.

There’s no telling how much Jaime had to drink at El Gallo, but I’m sure with the drink specials going on, it was probably more than one. Now, it hasn’t been clarified why, but Jaime was driving a gray rental Toyota Camry, and she decided to drive herself to Center Street to meet up with people. On Center Street, she went to several different bars like the Drop-In, the Crab Shacks, and Snapper Jacks. Even though Jaime became more visibly intoxicated throughout the night, she continued to be served drinks at each of the bars that she went to. Considering her size and overall small frame, just one drink per bar would have pushed Jaime far over the legal limit to drive.

Regardless, instead of calling an Uber, a Lyft, or even a friend, Jaime decided that she could make the 10 to 15-minute drive home. Snapper Jacks and Taco Boy share a parking lot. And from there, all Jaime would have needed to do was make one turn onto State Highway 171, and it would have been a near straight shot to James Island.

A little before 10:00 p.m., Jaime pulled out of the parking lot. But instead of going west toward the highway, she accidentally made a wrong turn and started heading on East Ashley Avenue. Now, usually if you make a wrong turn, there will be some side street that you can cut through to get back on the right track or an obvious place to make a U-turn. However, each end of East Ashley Avenue literally dead-ends into the Atlantic Ocean with a lighthouse on one side and the Pelican Watch Pavilion on the other.

So, Jaime started driving in the direction toward the lighthouse, which seemed odd since that wasn’t the direction she should have been going in. It just so happened that newlyweds Eric and Sam Hutchinson were riding in that same direction on a golf cart toward their rented Airbnb for the night.

If Jaime had driven to and from Folly Beach several times before, she probably would have been highly confused as to why she was speeding down a cramped, dark, two-lane road surrounded by houses. Maybe she hadn’t even noticed that she had taken a wrong turn yet. Or maybe she was just trying to figure out which direction she was going and which driveway to turn into to turn around. Whatever she was thinking, it wasn’t about the speed limit.

I mentioned that most beach towns have a low speed limit due to low-speed vehicles, bikes, people walking, and residential streets typically have low speed limits anyway. On East Ashley Avenue and throughout all of Folly Island, the speed limit is 25 mph and only increases to 35 mph when you get out of the main beach area. So there was absolutely no time anywhere between Jaime’s house and Folly Beach where she should have been driving over 60 mph. But she was on that dark narrow road. Jaime was going 65 mph.

Now most of us know that alcohol causes blurred vision, reduces motor skills and your coordination. It causes delayed reaction and impairs judgment and so many other issues when it comes to being able to drive safely. One of the most important things a person needs to have while driving is a quick reaction time in order for your brain to tell your foot in a split second to slam on the brakes, to veer out of the way, or to anticipate an accident. Intoxicated drivers may not even realize they’ve been in an accident until it’s already over.

This tragic, but 100% preventable set of circumstances is exactly what took place that night after Jaime made the choice to get behind the wheel.

Flying down the road at 65 mph, Jaime slammed into the golf cart that was carrying Samantha and Eric Hutchinson and Ben and Brogan Garrett.

By the time they had made it almost 3 miles, going 25 mph, most of Sam and Eric’s family members had already made it to their rentals and had started getting undressed and winding down. That was until everyone in the surrounding houses heard what sounded like a bomb go off somewhere outside.

A resident on East Ashley Avenue came out of her house to see what was going on, and she was faced with one of the most horrific accidents that she had ever seen. You can imagine how horrible accidents are when someone plows into a regular stationary or slow-moving car at high speeds. Those cars typically have doors, seat belts, airbags, and protection. A golf cart has seats, a plastic roof, wheels, and that’s about it. When the car Jaime was driving made contact, there would have been nothing in between the car and Sam and Eric.

Now, if you’ve ever heard or witnessed a car accident, it truly does sound like an explosion. The golf cart and the passengers in it were launched 100 yards, which is about the length of a football field. The golf cart rolled several times, and when the neighbors came outside to look, they saw people lying in various places on the ground, and a mangled mess of metal.

The woman who came out of her house first ran over to Eric, whose face was so badly injured, the woman couldn’t even tell if he was alive. She found a pulse on him, so she went to check on the other victims. Brogan was miraculously able to stand up, but was clearly injured, walking unsteady and very confused. The woman then checked Ben, who had severe injuries and horrible road rash, but the woman was able to find a pulse. She then made her way over to Samantha who was laying on the ground still in her wedding dress. However, the woman wasn’t able to find a pulse on Sam.

One or more of the onlookers called 911 immediately, who arrived just minutes later. An officer began working on Sam by performing chest compressions until the fire department arrived. They took over, trying everything they could to save Sam’s life, but it was clear that she was gone and had been killed on impact.

Either one of the family members staying close by had realized what was going on or Brogan called his mom. But soon the family was starting to show up to the chaotic scene of sirens, flashing lights, crying, yelling, and just complete and utter mayhem. Lisa and Mandy went out on the balcony of their beach rental and could see the flashing lights when a moment later, Eric’s sister-in-law came speeding up to them and told them to get in the truck.

At that moment, they knew that something had happened to Sam. They drove the one mile to the scene and Lisa and Mandy jumped out of the truck and started running and screaming Sam’s name. When they got there, they were told by someone that everyone had been taken to the hospital, but since they didn’t have any of their IDs, they would be under Jane and John Does.

There was still so much going on and the middle of the scene had been roped off by caution tape, so they weren’t really able to see much other than the mangled vehicles. They jumped back in the truck and raced to the closest hospital. But since the hospital hadn’t been told anyone’s names yet…