Christopher Leo Miller
A Berlin man was sent to prison for five years for driving drunk and failing to stop immediately after his minivan struck and killed a pedestrian on Route 611.
Christopher Leo Miller, 70, was sentenced May 22 in Worcester County Circuit Court. He’d been convicted in February of driving under the influence of alcohol and failing to stop at an accident involving death in the Nov. 2, 2024, crash that killed Carolyn Melissa Long, 49, of Berlin.
Miller’s case was not prosecuted as vehicular homicide, a distinction that attorneys say reflects the complicated facts of that night, including where the victim was walking, poor visibility, and whether prosecutors could prove negligent driving.
Defense attorney Ryan Bodley said his client’s intoxication was not disputed – state police measured his blood-alcohol concentration at .15 – but said the evidence in court did not support a claim that intoxication caused the crash.
“They have to prove an element of negligence,” Bodley said of prosecutors, “and they couldn’t.”