A New Jersey woman charged with drunkenly running down and killing an elderly Boston man has a string of arrests for reckless driving, disorderly conduct, and assault going back over a decade — including two in recent months that earned her the nickname “Screaming Banshee.”
Lauren Mullins, 32, was arrested in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after allegedly slamming her SUV into 73-year-old Daniel O’Neil, who was driving a moped around 1:30 a.m. March 21 through a quiet intersection near the MIT campus.
The collision sent O’Neil flying into an MIT police cruiser, and carried off to the hospital with grievous injuries. He died two days later, WCVB reported.
Lauren Mullins, 32, was arrested in Cambridge after the March 21 wreck that left a 73-year-old man dead.
Mullins, a New Jersey native and Suffolk University graduate who recently sat the bar exam, was allegedly found drunk at the carnage-filled scene, and arrested on the spot.
“Officers were unable to conduct a standardized field sobriety test due to the defendant’s belligerent nature and behavior,” Massachusetts prosecutors said last week as she appeared in court.
She was charged with operating under the influence of liquor with serious bodily injury, along with negligent operation of a motor vehicle.
But it was just Mullins’ latest arrest in what appears to be a years-long path of drunken destruction — and O’Neil’s family is baffled over why she was allowed on the streets.
“This seems like something that totally could’ve been avoided had people gotten her help in her life,” O’Neil’s niece, Meredith, told WBZ.
Mullins has appeared in numerous arrest videos where she was apparently drunk and screaming at police officers.
New Jersey records under her name show arrests for the likes of assault, resisting arrest, speeding, and disorderly conduct going back to 2014.
Before the Cambridge incident, her most recent arrest was in Hoboken on January 31, which was captured on bodycam footage published by Transparency Bodycam — and showed her severely inebriated on a nighttime sidewalk and bellowing herself hoarse at officers who confronted her.
Just months earlier, she was arrested again outside a bar on October 24. Bodycam footage from that incident captured Mullins repeatedly screaming “I know my right to remain silent” at officers.
“I’m smarter than all of you combined, I have a law degree,” she yelled from inside the squad car after she was detained and carried away, the footage shows.
The wrecked moped of Daniel O’Neil, 73, who died two days after he was hit.
Mullins’ SUV, in which she allegedly plowed into O’Neil’s moped while driving drunk by the MIT campus. Cambridge PDThen in a third video from January 2023, she was filmed apparently wasted, hurling abuse at officers who responded to calls from neighbors who said she had drunkenly picked a fight with them.
Mullins was finally restrained and hauled off to a hospital because of her inebriation in that incident, which appears to have earned her a charge of assault on a law enforcement officer.
Mullins may have been severely injured in a car accident in Arizona, according to a 2023 GoFundMe — though the details of that incident remain unclear.
Mullins was last arrested in New Jersey on January 31, and was filmed yelling abuse at police officers.
“On Thursday February 9th, Lauren was involved in a terrible car accident in Scottsdale, Arizona. She was hit by a car and sustained several injuries including a fractured shoulder, pelvis and C6 vertebrae,” the GoFundMe read, indicating she was hospitalized for weeks after undergoing extensive surgery.
Prosecutors with the Middlesex County district attorney’s office said she also had a record in Massachusetts.
Mullins’ attorneys argued in court that she was “curable” and claimed her recent behavior was not a lifelong pattern.
O’Neil’s niece disagreed.
“She doesn’t feel remorse. She’s not sorry. She’s only sorry because she has to pay for it,” O’Neil said.
Following pleas from prosecutors, Mullins was ordered held on an increased $65,000 cash bail.
