State’s Attorney Sarah George infuriated that police released name of teen driver who crashed head-on into couple’s car
By Mike Donoghue, Vermont News First
A teenage driver fined $220 for her part in a double-fatal car crash that killed an elderly Addison County couple in September 2020 in Charlotte is among those arrested at an anti-Israel encampment at Columbia University last week.
And the family of the two dead victims still aren’t happy that Isabel Jennifer Seward of Atlanta, Ga. never went to prison for crossing the double line and killing family members.
Public records show Seward, then 16, — whose father William J. Seward, was a longtime high-ranking executive at UPS — received a Vermont civil traffic ticket for an offense listed as “driving on roadways laned for traffic” in the double fatal crash, Vermont News First reported at the time.
Seward’s mother later paid the $220 fine for her daughter, court records show.
The family of the dead couple – Chet Hawkins, who was a longtime town official in Ferrisburgh, and his wife, Connie – are furious that Seward was never seriously held accountable for killing the elderly couple, according to news accounts.
“The only reason she wasn’t charged with murder is because she has a rich daddy. She should be behind bars,” The New York Post quoted Eve Taylor, a niece of the victims, in its Sunday edition.
Seward, who had been visiting her grandfather, a doctor in Charlotte, was a two-sport athlete at Paideia, an exclusive private school in Atlanta.
Attempts to reach the family members through their lawyer before deadline were unsuccessful.
Seward provided at least three conflicting stories about her cellphone leading up to and after the crash near Church Hill Road on Sept. 8, 2020, according to the Vermont State Police accident report.
A driver trailing Seward captured the crash on video, police said. It showed her in a Toyota Tacoma crossing the double yellow line and crashing the small truck into the Hawkins car as he tried to pull as far right into the breakdown lane to avoid the crash.
Instead of filing two felony criminal charges of careless and negligent driving with death resulting, Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George directed Vermont State Police to issue the teen the civil ticket, records show.
George, it turned out, was apparently more upset with the Vermont State Police for releasing the name of the teen-age driver, according to an email obtained by Vermont News First through a public records request at the time.
George wrote in an email to one of her deputies, “Unbelievable — why on earth would VSP not have contacted their freakin general counsel BEFORE releasing the name!??!”