Shortly after leaving their wedding reception, a bride tragically died and her husband was admitted to the hospital.
It was the day that Samantha Miller and Aric Hutchinson were meant to be enjoying, their best day ever.
Following their official marriage, the newlyweds celebrated with friends and family at the wedding reception.
Tragic events occurred, nevertheless, when they departed in a golf cart with a “Just Married” sign on it.
There has been an overwhelming amount of global support for the announcement.
A commenter says, “This story hurts my heart.” I’m sending love and strength to each and every one of you during this terrible time.
“Aric, our hearts are broken for you,” writes another.
A third says, “It’s unbelievable that you’re no longer with us, Sam.”
Reports state that 25-year-old Jamie Komoroski, an alleged drunk driver, rear-ended Miller and Hutchinson.
In a 25 mph zone, Komoroski was allegedly driving at 65 mph while intoxicated while using a rental Toyota Camry.
The collision happened on Folly Beach, USA, in South Carolina.
After being flung more than a hundred yards, the couple tumbled multiple times before coming to a rest.
Miller’s severe force injuries from the collision caused his instantaneous death.
After the accident, Hutchinson required two reconstructive operations and was in a severe state due to several fractured bones and brain damage.
Ben Garrett, his brother-in-law, and Brogan, his nephew, were also hurt in the wagon that Komoroski struck.
Komoroski was charged with three counts of felony DUI resulting in grave bodily damage or death and reckless vehicular murder while driving alone.
Over $743,000 has been received via a GoFundMe campaign set up by Hutchinson’s mother Annette to pay for Hutchinson’s medical bills and Miller’s funeral expenses.
Hutchinson’s mother posts an emotional message, saying, “Aric has lost the love of his life. I was handed Aric’s wedding ring in a plastic bag at the hospital, five hours after Sam placed it on his finger and they read each other their vows.”
Since the tragedy, a lot of people have shared the couple’s last photos on social media, which feature them laughing and performing a sparkler tunnel as they leave their wedding ceremony.
Since then, Hutchinson has made her voice known in a recent Good Morning America interview.
He talked candidly about that awful day, his journey to rehabilitation, and dealing with such a profound loss.
He added, “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it,” in reflection on the event. It’s difficult to attempt and understand that night’s transition from an all-time high to an all-time low.”
He spoke warmly of his late wife, saying, “She was so happy.” As most people are aware, organizing a wedding can be incredibly stressful. And that evening, she simply seemed strangely at ease.
Samantha said, “I do remember the last thing I remember her saying was she wanted the night to never end,” as Aric recalled her final words.
It has been revealed by the Associated Press that Hutchinson would get a partial settlement of around $1 million for the crash.
The Post and Courier reports that Hutchinson will get about $863,300 from a number of sources, including Progressive vehicle insurance, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and the Folly Beach businesses The Drop-In Bar & Deli, The Crab Shack, and Snapper Jacks.
The driver was allegedly provided alcohol by these establishments, and Enterprise hired her the car.
The entire settlement sum is $1.3 million; but, after attorney and legal fees, Hutchinson’s share will be less.
Currently free on bond, Komoroski is accused with several felonies, including two counts of driving while intoxicated and causing serious bodily injury, reckless homicide, and driving under the influence resulting in death.
The court system is still working on her case.
Now that his mother-in-law is contesting the legality of their marriage, the bereaved groom is engaged in a legal struggle with her over her estate.
At first, Lisa Miller, Samantha’s mother, showed her admiration for Hutchinson, referring to him as her son.
She is now attempting to have him removed from his position as Samantha’s executor, claiming that there may have been “potential fraud” and raising the possibility that the marriage was void.
A potentially large court payout from the wrongful death claim is at the heart of the conflict.
A move to intervene in the case was filed by Lisa Miller, who then withdrew it and filed it again.
She feels Hutchinson is marginalizing her in the settlement process, which she feels goes against her daughter’s interests, she told The Post and Courier.
Given that we are the two most important persons in Sam’s life, “Aric and I agreed several times that Sam would want us to do everything together,” the woman said.
“I never intended to question the marriage’s legality. I never wanted to bring Sam down. However, I believe that by defyney grab,” according to Miller’s lawyer Jerry Meehan, who also claims that Lisa Miller’s main goal is to safeguard Samantha’s fortune and make sure that all legitimate heirs are taken into account.
Due to the fact that Hutchinson’s aunt and uncle signed the marriage license, which was recorded on May 1, three days after the wedding, questions have been raised about the validity of the union.
In addition, there were purported inconsistencies in the license; for example, Miller was only 34 years old, while the aunt and uncle claimed to have known one other for 36 years.
Aric Hutchinson, who said he had given his mother-in-law half of the settlement, expressed regret about the dispute.
His attorneys have deemed Lisa Miller’s move to intervene “morally dubious” and “legally baseless,” and they have rejected the doubts regarding the marriage certificate as unimportant.”
“Aric has been more than generous with Lisa Miller—offering her half of the money—and she has repaid him by threatening to bring a frivolous challenge to the validity of his marriage to Sam,” stated Patrick Wooten, Hutchinson’s attorney. It would seem that Ms. Miller would be too proud of her own daughter to act in that way.
Lisa Miller has been promised by Hutchinson half of the settlement from the wrongful death lawsuit in exchange for her quitting her legal defense of their marriage.
“Lisa Miller does not have a legitimate legal claim, which is why Aric made this settlement offer. He is a generous person who would naturally like to avoid costly, public litigation over the validity of his marriage to Sam,” Wooten stated.
My Mother-in-Law Purchased the Perfect Mattress for Me – I Was Horrified When I Discovered Her Real Intentions
Despite her age, Julia was just full of life. She constantly walked in and out of our home, ready to throw herself into our kitchen.
“I just want to feed you guys,” she told me when I asked her to sit down, ready to cook for her instead.
“I don’t have anything else to do besides meet the ladies for drinks,” she chuckled.
It usually ended with us cooking together — Toby coming home to music and laughter echoing in the kitchen.
My parents were across the country because I had moved for college, and ended up settling down here with Toby. And as much as phone and video calls kept me close to my family, at the end of the day, Julia filled the role of a mother — a mother in close proximity anyway.
After three years of being married, Toby and I were trying to have a baby.
“I’m ready if you are,” Toby told me. “I think it’s time now.”
I agreed with Toby. I was ready — I wanted to be a mom.
So, we began trying. And for months, we just couldn’t get pregnant. And the longer we tried, the more reality set in. Maybe we just weren’t meant to have biological children.
“What do you want to do?” I asked Toby. “Keep trying?”
Toby nodded. I knew that he wouldn’t ask me to do anything I didn’t want to do, but I also knew that he desperately wanted to be a father.
So, torn, I turned to my mother-in-law for advice. Julia took me to meet with a wellness coach, she took me for fertility massages, and then, she even bought Toby and I a brand new mattress.
“Maybe your body is just not rested enough,” my mother-in-law said. “Maybe you just need to give your body the best chance possible at this.”
“Do you think that it was a bit unnecessary?” I asked Toby as we got into bed that night, testing out our new mattress.
“Normally, I would have said yes,” Toby admitted. “But maybe there’s something to what Mom said. Our mattress was horrible before. Maybe it will make a difference.”
And it did. Because not even a month later, I discovered that we were pregnant. At first, I didn’t know whether to tell my husband and our family because I was so nervous about everything.
I felt that if I acknowledged the truth, then maybe I was inviting something to happen. But it made no sense — my irrational fear was selfish. Toby needed to know that we were well on our way to being parents.
“Thank goodness,” Toby said, picking me up. “Finally!”
Once we were safe within the second trimester, we told our family — satisfied that our baby’s growth was on track.
And then, before we knew it, our daughter, Maddie, was born.
My mother-in-law took over, caring for the three of us while we navigated the new waters of parenthood. She cooked and cleaned, and took over Maddie’s early morning feeding times.
Julia’s presence made me feel loved, especially because my parents were unable to come over and meet our baby yet.
Until Toby discovered something in our home that changed the way I viewed Julia forever.
Toby and I didn’t mind that Maddie spent the night in our bed – it was just easier for me to feed her through the night. But one night, Maddie had a blow-out, causing our bed to suffer the consequences.
“You sort the baby out,” Toby yawned when I woke him up to Maddie’s drama. “I’ll sort the bed out.”
I picked up my daughter and took her into the bathroom – her blow-out called for a bath, not just a diaper change. Maddie cooed and pressed her gummy hands to my face.
“Sweet girl,” I told her. “You just have to make life difficult for Dad and me, huh?”
Meanwhile, what I didn’t know was that while Toby was stripping our bed, he had uncovered something strange attached to our mattress.
By the time I was done with Maddie, she was almost asleep again. So, I took her to our bedroom, ready to put her into the crib while I helped Toby change the bedding.
“Oh, honey,” he said when he saw me standing in the doorway. “We cannot use this anymore.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, setting Maddie down. “Did she get it into the mattress?”
Toby looked nervous. He had picked up the mattress so that it stood on its side.
“No, it’s not that,” he said.
I was perplexed, watching him struggle with words. “What are you talking about? It’s just a mattress, we’ll clean it–”
“No, Larissa,” he interrupted, his voice rising in panic. “It’s not just a mattress.”
By this point, I was sleep-deprived and slightly annoyed with my husband. Toby was not a man to fumble for his words, and yet, here he was, in the early hours of the morning, too uncertain to change the sheets.
“What?”
“Look what I found,” he said.
Toby handed me a little silk bag. Inside there were various herbs. I hadn’t seen the bag before.
“What is this? Where did you find it?” I asked.
“It was pinned to the mattress. It was under the mattress protector, so I think we just didn’t notice it before.”
“Fine, but what is it for?” I asked, confused and irritable.
“It’s fertility herbs, it has to be!” Toby exclaimed.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Listen, I don’t know if this is true or not, but I do know that my mother believes in old wives’ tales. What if this is one of those tales?”
“She would never do that,” I said. “No way!”
“Then where else did it come from?” Toby asked flatly.
He made us sleep in the guest bedroom – where Julia slept when she stayed over. But of course, I couldn’t sleep. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t silence my mind.
I looked at Maddie, sleeping in between Toby and me. She was perfect. Sure, we had a difficult time conceiving, but Maddie was our child through and through. She had my hair and Toby’s eyes. She was ours in every sense of the word.
But there was no mistaking the fact that she was born shortly after Julia had gifted us the bed.
Could those herbs have helped with Maddie’s birth? But was that even possible?
I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, the familiar smell of gas hit my nose. Outside, Toby was dousing our mattress. He threw the match on it as I stepped outside the back door.
The mattress went up in flames in an instant – the flames seemed to dance with a fervor that matched the turmoil inside me. I was trying to understand Julia’s motives. She had always been so close to us – to me – so I couldn’t understand why she would keep this away from me.
I didn’t understand the significance of the herbs, but if she had explained it to me, I wouldn’t have felt the paranoia and fear that had settled in my body since Toby’s discovery.
“What are you doing?” I exclaimed, hearing the fire grow louder.
“We couldn’t keep it, honey. We just couldn’t,” he said.
Toby had a deep fear for anything esoteric – anything that bordered the supernatural was too much for him. He would have rather slept in our car than spent another night in the house with the mattress.
As the mattress burned, I kept an eye on the baby monitor, watching Maddie sleep. The silence between Toby and I was heavy with the uncertainty of what had been going on in our home.
Later, Julia came over to make was breakfast as usual. My husband took the lead, his voice steady but laced with an undercurrent of betrayal.
“Mom, why didn’t you tell us about the mattress? About the herbs?” he asked.
I poured Julia a cup of tea – despite everything that we had learned, she was still one of my favorite people. I loved her like I loved my mother.
My mother-in-law’s face crumpled, her usual vibrancy replaced by a somber guilt.
“I just wanted to help. I knew that you were having trouble conceiving, and I thought that if it worked, you wouldn’t care how. I never meant to hurt either of you. Especially not my granddaughter.”
“What else did you do? What’s in the bag? Other than the herbs?” Toby’s questions flew hard and fast around our living room.
“Nothing!” Julia exclaimed, finally registering Toby’s fear. “It’s just dried herbs. I can give you a list of them,” she said. “I’ll take you both to the store where I got them from. It’s a sweet little apothecary next to my dentist. It’s a store all about natural wellness.”
“You could have just told us,” I found myself saying. “How we can trust anything you do now? How do we know if our baby is a miracle baby or just an outcome of your herbs?”
“Does that matter?” she asked, her eyes brimming with tears. “Maddie is here and she’s ours.”
I couldn’t exactly argue with that. Of course, Maddie was ours. I was just feeling wounded that Julia had done this and not told me. I also felt obligated to be angry with her – because my husband was livid.
“I’m sorry,” my mother-in-law whispered. “I really am.”
At her words, I felt Toby soften next to me.
“We need to start over, Mom,” he said. “If you plan on doing anything like this again, you have to tell us first. We need to know what’s going on in our own homes.”
Julia nodded and smiled at us. She seemed shaken that we had discovered the truth.
I was confused – there was a part of me that was eternally grateful to her because I know how difficult it was for us to get pregnant. But at the same time, how could sleeping on a bunch of herbs actually help us get pregnant?
Toby spent the rest of the day looking for mattresses online, while Julia baked us a tart for lunch. I just reveled in spending time with my daughter.
What do you think? Do you believe in natural remedies and old wives tales?
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