A 22-year-old St. Charles woman faces multiple felony charges in an August crash that killed Kennedy Reed, a 26-year-old Washington University School of Medicine graduate student.
St. Louis Metropolitan Police said Lilly Belfield was arrested Sept. 17 and charged with DWI resulting in the death of another person, involuntary manslaughter and three counts of second-degree assault.
Police said Belfield was driving west on Martin Luther King Drive on Aug. 4 when she approached North Euclid Avenue in the Kingsway East neighborhood. According to charging documents, Belfield was intoxicated and speeding when she passed another vehicle in a left-turn-only lane, ran a stop sign and struck Reed’s vehicle.
Courtesy photo
Reed died from her injuries, and three other people were injured.
Reed, who was from Hinds County, Mississippi, was entering her fourth year as a Ph.D. candidate at WashU Medicine, where she studied molecular microbiology and microbial pathogenesis.
She began her doctoral studies in 2023 and was researching how microbes contribute to the progression of skin cancer.