Police say she hit and killed 57-year-old John Breaux on Highway 287 around 2:30 Friday afternoon. The report says Breaux was standing "some distance" from the road.
Dressed in a red jumpsuit, wearing shackles, Thomas held her head down quietly and sobbed during most of her brief hearing. As the judge read Thomas her rights, she said nothing.
According to the arrest affidavit, officers described Thomas as "detached, spacey, not with it, generally unaware of what was going on around her" moments after the crash.
Police say in the report Thomas frequently took 20 to 30 seconds to respond to simple questions.
When asked where she was going, police say Thomas paused 20 to 30 seconds before telling them she was going to Boulder. When asked why she was going there, there was another long pause before she said it was because she lived in Boulder, the report states.
According to the report, when officers asked her what was happening at that moment, she told them: "I was hit by a car."
Moments before being interviewed by police, authorities found "a large number of prescription medication bottles in the glove box" of Thomas' PT Cruiser,while looking for proof of insurance. Thomas told authorities the prescriptions were hers and she had taken two of the pills that morning. It was unclear what kind of pills had been taken, since police redacted it from the arrest affidavit, due to medical privacy laws.
Police didn't smell alcohol on Thomas' breath, but asked her to go through a battery of roadside maneuvers to see if she was fit to drive. The report says Thomas "did very poorly on the roadside maneuvers."
Thomas was arrested and taken to a local hospital for breath and blood tests. She blew a .000 on a breath test for alcohol, according to the report, but the results of her blood test were not immediately known.
The report says Thomas did not realize she had hit someone until an officer told her while she was at the hospital - before that, she had believed she was involved in a two-car accident.
That's when Thomas asked police what happened. After the officer told her what he knew about the accident, she asked if the pedestrian had been hurt.
The officer told her he had been hurt bad, according to the report, and Thomas asked how bad he'd been hurt. The officer told her he was dead.
"It's the pills," Thomas said spontaneously, according to the affidavit. "I take too many of the pills!"
The report says Thomas told the same thing several times to the medical staff at the hospital, and to another detective with the Lafayette Police.
Formal charges against Thomas are expected Wednesday. In Monday's hearing, Thomas' bond was reduced from $100,000 to $50,000 but she remains in police custody. Her attorney, Raphael Flores, said in court that Thomas is a person of very limited means.
Breaux was on the shoulder of Highway 287, just north of South Boulder Road, his bicycle parked with two trash bags hanging from the handlebars, when he was hit and killed. Those who knew him say Breaux was always around the streets of Lafayette and Louisville picking up garbage and cans. They say his passion was to keep the area clean.
On Saturday, hundreds of mourners gathered at a grocery store parking lot to remember the man who dedicated his life to performing random acts of kindness, whether it was going out of his way to hold a door open for someone, wave at a passerby or round up shopping carts. They met to discuss a way to permanently memorialize Breaux.
Then on Sunday, hundreds came out again, this time to Louisville with their bicycles, to ride in Breaux's memory.
Funeral arrangements for Breaux are still being finalized. Some have suggested his bicycle be bronzed and put on display in a public memorial.
"The truth is he was the face of Louisville," said local photographer Erin Cox. "He is the one."
Cox took a black-and-white photo of a smiling Breaux as part of the Faces of Louisville Project. That photo is now being sold to raise money for a memorial in Breaux's honor.
To learn more, go to www.elcphoto.com; click on "view your event" and enter "John."/>
