Crime & Safety
Father and daughter accept plea deal in 2020 Indianapolis collision that claimed three teenage lives
By 
Editor
Indianapolis, Indiana – This week, plea deals were submitted in Marion County on behalf of a father and his daughter for their involvement in a 2020 collision that claimed the lives of three teenagers.
Okadema Link and his daughter Shantiana Willis consented to enter a guilty plea to three felonies related to driving while drunk and causing death.
In the beginning, Link and Willis were each charged with nine felonies, including reckless homicide and causing death by operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated. Charges were also brought against Link for fleeing the scene of an accident.
The plea deals specify the father’s and daughter’s sentences. A judge is scheduled to sentence Willis to 27 years and Link to 36 years in November. Both of them were mandated to make amends and to avoid getting in touch with the victims’ relatives.
Officers from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department responded to a hit-and-run report at 1:20 a.m. on May 23, 2020, at the 3700 block of West Kessler Boulevard North.
In court filings, it is stated that on May 23, 2020, just before one in the morning, Willis struck a GMC Acadia that was traveling south on Kessler Boulevard N. Drive around 38th Street. The GMC Acadia subsequently over the raised concrete median.
Then, Willis’s Chevrolet Malibu drifted into the other lane, and Link’s car hit him in the back, forcing Willis’s car into the other lane. Her car hit a parked tow truck and eventually stopped in a yard.
Walking on the gravel shoulder, the three teenagers were hit by Link’s Chevrolet Tahoe.
The names of the three adolescents who were struck and killed were: Tyjiana Velez, 13, David Evans, 14, and Kierra Brown, 15.
Link departed the scene, then came back. According to court documents, he admitted to authorities that he was the one who struck the three teenagers and that he was not racing Willis’ car.
The sentencing hearings for Link and Willis are scheduled for November 2 at 1 p.m.
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