STILLWATER, Okla. – Tony Coleman is the attorney hired to represent Adacia Chambers, 25.
She is the woman police say slammed into a crowd of people at Main and Hall of Fame in Stillwater Saturday morning during the homecoming parade.
Chambers was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and on Sunday, investigators, along with the Payne County District Attorney’s office, decided to file an affidavit and hold Chambers on four counts of second degree murder.
Coleman met with Chambers at the Stillwater jail Saturday night for about an hour.
He says after that meeting, he has serious doubts about her mental competency and says she displayed characteristics of mental illness.
While he admits he is not a psychiatrist, he says there is a history of mental illness in Chambers’ family.
Coleman says he is sure alcohol did not play a factor.
“There didn’t appear to be the smell of alcohol coming from her body. Her behavior was not consistent with someone who was coming off a drunken stupor,” said Coleman.
While we won’t know about drugs until the results of the blood test come back, Coleman says he’s convinced his client suffers from a mental illness and said she’d been displaying warning signs.
“It’s been shared that there were several days that she would go without sleeping, a very uneasiness about her, uncertainty about her future, her perception about herself, her perception about what others thought about her,” said Coleman.
Coleman says the night before the accident, Chambers was participating in a homecoming tradition called walk around where Stillwater residents look at the decorations in different neighborhoods.
“She was with her grandmother and her aunt. Both confirmed that she did not take any alcohol at any time. She’s not a drinker,” said Coleman.
Coleman says the next morning, her live in boyfriend said she seemed fine before leaving for work around 8:30 a.m.
But her lawyer says there is a dark period from the time she left work to the time of the crash that she doesn’t really remember.
“She doesn’t remember a whole lot about what happened. There was a period where I think that for a better lack of term, she could’ve even blacked out. She only remembers, from what was communicated with me, the end of the crash, people removing her from the car, shards of glass being everywhere and her being extremely confused while at the same time trying to maintain the ability to cooperate,” said Coleman.
Coleman says the Chambers family is devastated by this.
While he acknowledges the seriousness and horror of what happened, he says the person he met with does not resemble the monster some feel she must be.
“She wasn’t a drinker. She wasn’t a person known to do drugs. In fact, the only things that I’ve gotten from folks has been these are Christian people, her entire family are Christian people. She’s Cherokee Indian. And they are very well-known and loved and respected in Oologah where they’re from,” said Coleman.
Coleman says he was told that Chambers had previously contemplated suicide, although he does not feel Saturday’s event was a suicide attempt.
He believes she could be suicidal now, although he wasn’t sure if she was on suicide watch at the jail.
He also says that Chambers’ boyfriend told him that she is diabetic, but that was not currently taking any medication for that condition.
Chambers is expected to have her initial court appearance on Monday.
