Letters Speak for Family of Dead Cyclist : Justice: Friends of girl killed by driver voice grief in correspondence to judge.

Dozens of letters from little towns in Iowa and Minnesota are on their way to Superior Court Judge Charles Hayes. They ask him to punish the killer of Brandi Flaming.

Brandi, a 17-year-old high school senior-to-be, and her father, Jerry Flaming, died after they were struck by a car July 30 while riding a tandem bike along the coastal highway in Carlsbad.

William Meiss, a 51-year-old San Marcos man, pleaded guilty this week to two counts of vehicular manslaughter in the deaths of the two bicyclists.

As part of the plea agreement, the district attorney’s office dropped three other charges against Meiss involving felony drunk driving and driving under the influence of alcohol.

Judge Hayes set Meiss’ sentencing for Dec. 27. The maximum sentence is 56 months.

Brandi had arrived in California only a few days before her death last summer and was planning to stay with her father and attend her senior year in high school in Carlsbad, said her mother, Judy Ford, who lives in Jefferson, Iowa.

“All her school friends here in town wrote letters telling how important she was to them. The minister, a lot of grown-ups and many of her teachers wrote letters, too,” Ford said.

Ford also said letters had arrived from Windom and Minnetonka, Minn., where Brandi was born and where she grew up. In Jefferson, Brandi “was very sports-minded. She was one of the best on the swim team, and she was into cross-country running and basketball,” her mother said.

“It’s still gives me a jolt to pick up the local weekly and not see a picture of Brandi in it somewhere. She was good at everything she did.”

The letters--Ford estimates there were 80 to 90 in all--will be presented to Judge Hayes to make him aware of the effect that Brandi’s death had on many people.

“I am sure that people who didn’t know her but knew friends who were touched by her death have written letters, too,” Ford said. “We were coming out for the trial, but now I don’t know. I guess that the letters will speak for us.”

At Meiss’ preliminary hearing, Curtis Brown, a Leucadia auto mechanic, testified that Meiss, driving a high-performance Dodge Shelby, was driving erratically and was trying to race with every car he passed. Brown said he was waiting at a traffic signal on Carlsbad Boulevard with Meiss, when Meiss sped off with squealing tires.

Brown testified that the next thing he saw was two bodies flying up, 20 feet in the air. Brown said he chased the car involved for more than six miles before stopping the driver and persuading Meiss to return to the accident scene. His blood alcohol level proved to be .13%; a person with a blood alcohol level above .08% is considered legally drunk in California.

Meiss and his attorney, Rick Mills, could not be reached for comment Friday.