Jail Time Seems Likely for Episcopal Bishop Who Fled in Fatal Hit-and-Run Accident

Last week, Episcopal Bishop Heather Cook, second-ranking leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, was suspended from her duties following a hit-and-run accident on Saturday.  The bishop’s car struck a bicyclist, Thomas Palermo, and then drove away.  The bicyclist, 41-year-old husband and father Thomas Palermo, later died at the hospital.

After about twenty minutes, Bishop Cook returned to the scene on Baltimore’s Roland Avenue.  However, the State Attorney General Marilyn Mosby said at a press conference that charges would be filed.

CBS News reported that

“…an arrest warrant also will be issued for Bishop Suffragan Heather Cook, 58, whose blood-alcohol level tested at .22 after the wreck, nearly triple Maryland’s legal limit for driving.”

And the Baltimore Brew has reported that indeed, Cook was indicted late January 9 on manslaughter charges, and her bail was set at $2.5 million.   She was transported to court from Father Martin’s Ashley, an addiction treatment center in Havre de Grace, Maryland, where she had been in residence since the accident.  In its report, The Brew includes detailed information regarding the full charges.

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Cook has had a run-in with the law at least once before.  According to a report from the Baltimore Brew, Heather E. Cook had been arrested in September 2010, before being named a bishop, on drinking, driving and drug charges:

The two drug charges – possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia – were dropped in January 2012 by the Caroline County state’s attorney’s office, online records show.

She earlier pleaded guilty to the DUI charge and received “probation before judgement” with a $800 fine, $500 of which was suspended.

In that earlier case, Cook’s blood-alcohol level was .27.  The arresting officer wrote in his report that Cook was driving on the shoulder at Maryland’s Eastern Shore, driving 29 mph in a 50-mph-zone with a shredded front tire.  She was unable to complete her field sobriety test for fear that she would fall and hurt herself.

Cook was  was elected Bishop Suffragan in May 2014 by an electorate of both clergy and lay delegates.  She was elected on the fourth ballot from a slate of four nominees, and received 165 votes out of 304 possible.

Cook has served the Episcopal Church and its people in a variety of capacities since her priestly ordination in 1988, from school chaplain to parish priest to diocesan staff. Most recently she was the canon to the ordinary in the Episcopal Diocese of Easton on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.  Her parents were also involved with the Episcopal church–her father as rector of Old St. Paul’s in Baltimore, and her mother as a teacher of Religious Studies at St. Timothy School.