Bride Killed in Crash Minutes After Wedding

Newlyweds decided to drive motorcycle to reception
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 11, 2015 4:06 AM CST
Bride Killed in Crash Minutes After Wedding
Jana Miles-Burnett, center, is seen with her two children.   (GoFundMe)

What should have been the happiest day of Jana Miles-Burnett's life turned out to be the last one. The 40-year-old emergency dispatcher married William Burnett in a park in Buckner, Ill., on Saturday evening and was killed in a motorcycle accident that happened within minutes of their nuptials, the Southern Illinoisan reports. After the ceremony in a city park, the happy couple departed by motorcycle for the reception in a nearby tavern, but they struck a deer that ran out on US Route 14, state police say. Miles-Burnett was thrown to the ground and was pronounced dead in a hospital around an hour later, still wearing her wedding dress.

Her new husband, who wasn't seriously injured, tried to avoid the deer, but "there's some things you cannot control," her son-in-law tells Inside Edition. "Deer were going crazy that night. It's mating season and it's a rural road," he says. "Coming back, we saw 30 deer in a 20-minute ride running across the road." Friends and relatives say Miles-Burnett, who is survived by a 22-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son, got married after a whirlwind romance and was the happiest they had ever seen her. "It's hard to see someone finally happy in their life and it's gone so fast," a friend since childhood tells the Illinoisan. (This bride in Australia narrowly avoided being run over by a drunk wedding guest.)

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