Former Baltimore County Police Officer Receives 18-Month Sentence For DUI Fatalities

BALTIMORE COUNTY - A Baltimore County judge sentenced an ex-county police officer to 18 months in jail for fatally striking two pedestrians in May 2021.

Circuit Court Judge Michael Barranco ruled in May 2023 that William Collazo Brown was guilty of criminally negligent manslaughter. Brown was also convicted on other charges related to impaired driving.

He was sentenced to five years in the Baltimore County Detention Center, suspending all but 18 months of the term. Following his release, Brown will be on probation for three years, and under house arrest for the first 18 months of the probationary period.

What happened?

According to prosecutors, Brown was returning from a motorcycle club in Essex in the early morning of May 2, 2021, when he struck two pedestrians near North Point Boulevard in Dundalk, resulting in their deaths.

According to police, the first victim, 34-year-old Joshua Day, had already been hit by a different driver and was lying injured on the road when he was struck by Brown's motorcycle.

The second victim, Berlynn Matthews, aged 21, had left her vehicle to assist Day when Brown hit her. The prosecution maintained that Brown was both drunk and speeding at the time of the accident.

Berlynn Matthews' father, David Matthews, expressed his family's disappointment with the sentence to the Baltimore Sun, stating that Brown should be facing more jail time.

"It's devastating. How can a life, let alone two lives, be valued so little? And it wasn't just some average citizen," Matthews told the Sun. "This was an individual who had police training, who had been responsible for apprehending people for the same actions that he himself committed. It's shocking."