Wrong-way drunk driver who caused I-71 crash that killed 3, injured 2 others, pleads guilty
A Near East Side man has admitted that while driving drunk in 2018 he caused a wrong-way, multi-vehicle crash on Interstate 71 north of Downtown that killed three people and injured three, including himself.
Corey Johnson, 36, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Franklin County Common Pleas Court to three counts of aggravated vehicular homicide and one count of aggravated vehicular assault in connection with the crash, which occurred around 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 2, 2018.
Franklin County Assistant Prosecutor Dan Cable said Johnson was driving south in the northbound lanes of I-71. Johnson got on at the East 17th Avenue ramp and near East 11th Avenue hit a car head-on and that rotated his vehicle into the path of a second car, Cable said.
One of the struck vehicles then was pushed into a fourth vehicle, according to a Columbus police report.
Following the crash, Johnson and his passenger, Raven Shepard, were taken to OhioHealth Grant Medical Center in critical condition.
In one of the vehicles struck head-on, two sisters, 20-year-old Amal Mohamed and 18-year-old Aniza Abdi Karim died at the scene. Amina Mohamed, 15, then an eighth grader at Columbus City's Wedgewood Middle School who was also in that vehicle, was taken to Nationwide Children's Hospital in critical condition.
Gabriel Ried Akomeah, 34, of Columbus, who was in a different vehicle struck head-on, also died at the scene, police said.
Police reported that at the time of the crash Johnson had a blood-alcohol content (BAC) level of .212 percent, more than twice the level at which a person is deemed impaired in Ohio.
Johnson will be sentenced on June 8.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus man pleads guilty to causing 2018 car crash that killed three
