Woman allegedly crashes ex-boyfriend's funeral, tries to run down mourners, police say

A Minnesota woman allegedly crashed her ex-boyfriend’s funeral in North Dakota, drove her car over gravestones and attempted to mow down mourners, police said.

On May 1, loved ones had gathered at Riverside Cemetery in Fargo for the funeral of Colin MacDonald, who unexpectedly died in his sleep at age 24 as a result of complications from a minor surgery.

“All of a sudden, I heard someone screaming and yelling. So, I came out of the tent to find a car taking off at about 50 miles an hour and people screaming, ‘She just ran me over!’” MacDonald’s mom, Joan McIntyre, told KVLY-TV. 

According to court documents obtained by the station, the ex-girlfriend, Blair Whitten, 28, told an officer she was sitting in her vehicle when “multiple people approached her” and she felt threatened so she carefully drove away.

A family member confirmed going to Whitten’s vehicle to ask her to leave because she wasn’t supposed to be at the service, court documents state.

Police later charged Whitten with one misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment. She is due in court in July.

“She knew she wasn’t welcome and what she did instead of leaving peacefully was try to run somebody over and run somebody else over, which was me,” Gericka Charbonneau, MacDonald’s girlfriend at the time of his death, told the television station.

Charbonneau noted there were elderly and children in attendance as well others at the cemetery not associated with MacDonald’s service that “didn’t know what was going on.” 

MacDonald’s loved ones claimed Whitten has been threatening and harassing them for over five years and they alerted police to potential issues at the funeral after the suspect allegedly made disturbing statements on Facebook, KVLY-TV reported.

“I was afraid for my life!” Charbonneau said. “It’s hard because you can’t even grieve because you just have so much anger and you’re scared. You’re so worried about yourself and so worried about his gravesite.”

Both women said they now want MacDonald to be remember for who he was and not for what happened on the day of his burial.

“You could never be sad, never could be mad because he would just bring a smile right to your face,” Charbonneau said. “He was my purpose. He made me so happy,”

MacDonald’s mother added, “If I could have switched places with him so that he and Gericka could have had a full life together, I would have done it in an instant.”