DETROIT — A Michigan judge last week jailed the mother of a drunken driver for laughing as the victim’s grieving family spoke about the impact his death has had on their lives.
Amanda Marie Kosal, 26, of Redford Township, cried quietly in Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Qiana Lillard’s courtroom on Thursday, as she listened to Jerome Zirker’s sister talk about her brother, who Kosal killed in a drunken driving crash last June.
Kosal's mother, Donna Kosal, and an unidentified man with her smiled and laughed as they sat in the back of the courtroom, according to WDIV Local 4 News in Detroit. Lillard, who heard their laughter, paused the Zirker family's victim impact statements to address the behavior.
She then addressed Donna Kosal.
"It's time for him to go," Lillard said during the dressing down, which was recorded by the news station and posted to its Facebook page. "And I don't know who he is, but whoever can sit here at a tragic moment like this and laugh and smile when somebody has lost a family member…. In the entire time that Mr. Zirker's sister was speaking, that clown -- and that's what I am going to call him, a clown -- was sitting there smiling and laughing."
“And you can go, too. Because if you don't know how to act, you can go to jail,” Lillard said. “So leave. Anybody that can sit there and laugh and smirk….”
She tells a court officer to “take her, she’s going in the back.”
“Anybody else want to go?” Lillard asked the other people in the courtroom supporting Amanda Kosal. “You can go, too. This is a court of law. And these are very serious matters. I understand that you all are very upset because your loved one is going to prison, but guess what? She's going to prison for the choices that she made. These people are here, grieving, saddened because a senseless act took away their loved one, and you all are sitting around here like it's a joke?”
“Not in courtroom 502. Not today and not any other day.”
Lillard told Donna Kosal she was going to jail for 93 days for criminal contempt as a court officer escorted her out.
The judge's Facebook page was inundated with praise and support after news of her actions went public. She thanked people for visiting the page and expressing their feelings and assured them that, although she could not respond to each person individually, she had read all of their comments.
"I am honored to have the privilege of serving the citizens of Wayne County," Lillard wrote.
WDIV reported that a tearful Donna Kosal apologized at a hearing before Lillard the following morning.
"I deeply apologize for what I did," Donna Kosal said, according to the news station. "I was under a lot of stress."
The judge amended her sentence to one day, with time served, and ordered that she be released from jail.
"What you have to understand is, as hard as this is for you to see your baby going to prison, imagine what that family feels like when their child is dead," Lillard told Donna Kosal. "I hope that you learned a valuable lesson from this."
Amanda Kosal was sentenced on Thursday to three to 15 years in prison for the June 23, 2016, crash that killed Zirker, 31, and seriously injured his fiancée. WDIV reported that Kisal admitted she was drunk when the pickup truck she was driving crossed the center line and struck the SUV carrying Zirker and Brittany Johnson, 31, of Inkster.
Kosal pleaded guilty to operating under the influence causing death.
Johnson, who is now a single mother to the couple’s five children, told the news station that Zirker had just picked her up from her job as a caregiver at a group home when the fatal crash occurred. The children were usually with their father when he picked her up, she said.
"Luckily, they were at grandma's house, or it would have been all of us," Johnson told WDIV.
Zirker’s mother, Rathel Fizer, told the news station that she would rather see Amanda Kosal free and working to help support her son’s children, since he no longer can.
"If she goes to prison or jail, I'm taking care of her," Fizer said. "I don't want her to mail a check. I want her to hand-deliver it to them so she can see the faces that she destroyed."