Randall Miller, director of a bio-pic about musician Gregg Allman, pleaded guilty to charges of criminal trespassing and involuntary manslaughter in Georgia’s Chatham County Superior Court on March 9. In return for the guilty plea – which results in two years’ jail time, eight years’ of probation and a $20,000 fine for Miller – prosecutors agreed to drop charges against his wife and business partner, Jody Savin. Executive producer Jay Sedrish, also pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing and was placed on 10 years’ probation.
A year earlier, on Feb. 20, camera assistant Sarah Jones was killed and eight other workers were injured while trying to escape an oncoming freight train during the filming of a scene for “Midnight Rider,” a biopic based on Allman’s life.
The incident occurred during the filming of a scene on the tracks of the Doctortown train trestle in rural Georgia that spans the Altamaha River.
During filming, crew members saw a CSX train heading toward them. They immediately started exiting the tracks, trying to remove set pieces and get off the trestle before the train reached them. However, they were unable to outrun the oncoming train.
Jones was killed and eight other crew members were injured by debris when the train hit a hospital bed being used as a set piece, according to OSHA. Witnesses said that the bed hit Jones and caused her to be pushed into the path of the oncoming train, which was traveling at 55 mph.
