Juvenile Drunk Driver Receives Lengthy Prison Sentence for Death of M.A.D.D. Advocate

Colby James Tackett DOB 10/28/2004

Madison and Rankin Counties’ District Attorney Bubba Bramlett announced that Circuit Judge Dewey Arthur sentenced Colby James Tackett to serve 15 years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections for the crime of Aggravated DUI resulting in Death.

On October 7, 2022, the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department responded to Highway 471 in Brandon for a head-on collision in which the victim, 62-year-old nurse Beverly Luckett, did not survive. The other driver, Tackett, a seventeen year-old, was intoxicated and swerved his vehicle into the victim’s lane, resulting in the death of Ms. Luckett, a long-time Mothers Against Drunk Driving (M.A.D.D.) advocate.

Tackett pled guilty to Aggravated Driving Under the Influence Resulting in Death and was sentenced to the maximum sentence of twenty-five years in prison with the last ten years of the twenty-five-year sentence suspended pending strict compliance with all terms of supervised probation.

On September 24, 2022, only two weeks before the head-on collision, Tackett had been arrested by the Flowood Police Department for another underage drinking incident.

“This is a heart-wrenching case,” stated District Attorney Bramlett. “The Luckett family lost the matriarch of their family in a preventable tragedy. It was not lost on anyone that Mr. Tackett should have received the proverbial wake-up call when he was arrested for underage drinking a mere 13 days before he killed Ms. Luckett. Tackett will have to live with the consequences, and I anticipate that the emotional burden will be worse than the significant prison sentence.”

“On behalf of my office and the citizens I represent, thank you to all the law enforcement officers and first responders who have the unimaginable responsibility of working these traffic fatalities and informing the victims’ families of the senseless loss of their loved ones. Drunk driving affects all of us, and we encourage everyone to think about others before driving impaired,” urged DA Bramlett.