On July 13, at approximately 2:45 a.m. in Danbury, Connecticut, a drunk driver slammed into a vehicle carrying off-duty Bridgeport Police Officer Cooper Whiteside, 38, and his girlfriend Brittany Anne Islami, 34. Both were killed. Islami left behind three children — ages 12, 10, and 7.
The driver, 27-year-old Melissa Rodriguez, is an illegal alien. Her blood alcohol level was 0.14 percent — nearly twice the legal limit. And a judge just reduced her bond.
Rodriguez was initially held on $500,000 bond. She faces two counts of second-degree manslaughter with a motor vehicle, illegal operation of a motor vehicle while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, traveling unreasonably fast, and failure to drive in the proper lane. The charges describe a woman who should not have been behind the wheel, on that road, or in this country.
Judge Seán McGuinnes, a Democrat-appointed jurist, granted the bond reduction. The specific new amount has not been publicly disclosed, but the direction is clear: downward. A woman charged with killing a police officer and his girlfriend while driving drunk and illegally present in the United States just got a better deal from a Connecticut courtroom.
Danbury sits approximately 65 miles north of Manhattan. It's not a border town. It's not a sanctuary city processing center. It's a quiet Connecticut community where a cop and his girlfriend were killed by someone who had no legal right to be anywhere in the country, let alone behind the wheel at nearly twice the legal blood alcohol limit at 2:45 in the morning.
Three kids — 12, 10, and 7 — now grow up without their mother. Officer Whiteside, who spent his career protecting the people of Bridgeport, is gone. The woman charged with killing them both had her financial barrier to release lowered by a judge who apparently looked at two counts of manslaughter, a .14 BAC, and an illegal immigration status and decided the half-million-dollar bond was too steep.
Connecticut Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both Democrats, have not issued statements on the case — which tells you everything about where their priorities sit. Two of the most vocal immigration voices in the Senate have nothing to say when an illegal alien kills a cop in their own state.
The legal argument for bond reduction usually rests on flight risk and community ties. Consider what those terms mean for a defendant who is illegally present in the United States: no legal community ties, no documented address that immigration authorities have approved, and every incentive to disappear. The standard framework for bond evaluation practically screams "high risk." The judge reduced it anyway.