A Black mother of four and a doctor were both killed by the same driver in three weeks in Indianapolis, according to authorities. The driver, Kelli Anderson, was charged last week with one count of reckless homicide and six counts of criminal recklessness in the crash that claimed the life of the 28-year-old Black mom, Kiana Burns.
Anderson remains in jail after making her first court appearance Tuesday morning for reckless homicide. She told the judge she cannot afford bail and she was appointed a public defender, WTHR News reported. She is also not allowed to drive if she gets released before her trial, the outlet added.
On June 9, Anderson was involved in an eight-car crash at 52nd Street and Keystone Avenue that killed Burns, according to court records. Anderson was driving a white Lincoln SUV that smashed into the back of Burns’ stopped Pontiac G6 at almost 69 miles an hour, officials said. Burns’ vehicle was the first of the eight stopped vehicles Anderson ran into, court documents state.
Just three weeks earlier, Anderson’s car jumped a curb at 49th and Meridian streets, hitting and killing Brian Dillman, a Franciscan Health emergency room physician. Dillman was jogging on the sidewalk when the incident happened.
Anderson, who was not charged in the crash that killed Dillman, was told by doctors after the crash that she was a high risk to herself and for the next six months should not drive until she was cleared by a neurologist. She allegedly ignored these instructions, leading to the second crash on June 9 that killed Burns.
“This is two people killed within three weeks of each other,” Burns’ mother Denise Gatling told Fox 4 News. “It’s insane. It’s crazy.”
55-year-old Anderson was found at fault in five more crashes in Marion County in the past three years, investigators said. She was never ticketed by the police for a traffic violation in any of those crashes.
Her trial for the June 9 crash that killed Burns is set for September 1. Of the four children Burns left behind, one was born just last year. Gatling will be taking care of them.
“It’s hard, it’s hard to watch them deal with their grief and me having to deal with mine only when I can,” she said. “We definitely got robbed. They got robbed. I got robbed.”
