MIAMI – A 24-year-old man’s blood-alcohol content was over four times Florida’s legal limit when he drove through a stop sign and crashed — killing a 45-year-old man in Miami-Dade County, according to police.
Malik Sands appeared in court on Monday to face charges for the death of Wiljames St. Hilaires, who died of blunt force trauma during a crash shortly after 6 p.m., on Dec. 10, in Miami Gardens.
Sands was driving a black 2023 Jeep Cherokee toward the intersection of Northwest 188 Street and Fifth Avenue “with the accelerator fully pressed,” Detective Hamlet Diaz reported, according to an arrest warrant.
Sands’s speech was slurred, his eyes were bloodshot and glassy, and he smelled of alcohol about three hours before his blood was drawn at Aventura Hospital, according to the arrest warrant.
Police seized Sands’s blood sample on Dec. 12 and after a toxicology test showed his BAC was .328%, Diaz asked him to surrender on Dec. 27 and talked to his mother, according to the arrest warrant.
In Florida, it is illegal to drive with a .08% BAC or higher.
A Miami-Dade judge issued the arrest warrant on Dec. 29. Miami-Dade correctional officers booked Sands at about 1:30 a.m., at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, records show.
Surveillance videos and the Jeep’s event data recorder helped Miami Gardens detectives gather evidence for the case, according to the warrant. Sands was driving without a license, police said.
Sands’s “driving privilege had been suspended due to prior tickets he had received,” Diaz wrote, adding that Sands had “never obtained a Florida driver’s license.”
The crash also damaged two parked cars and the fence between two homes, according to the warrant.
Sands is facing charges of vehicular homicide, DUI manslaughter, and driving without a valid driver’s license.
Surveillance video in the case