ORMOND BEACH, FLORIDA: Legendary WWE diva Tammy Sytch, who is popularly known as 'Sunny' has entered a plea of "nolo contendere" and decided not to contest the felony charge against her for driving under the influence during a car accident.
Sunny was first slapped with the charge and seven others back in May last year after officials claimed she killed a 75-year-old man during a car crash while being inebriated just a couple of months before in Ormond Beach, Florida.
How many years does Tammy Sytch face behind bars?
The 50-year-old Hall of Famer now faces a prison sentence of up to 25 years, TMZ reports. Pleading "nolo contendere" is a legal term in the country that means that the accused refuses to contest the charges, accepting the conviction but avoiding an admission of factual guilt, neither admitting nor denying responsibility.
Sunny had initially pleaded not guilty to all of the charges which changed later in a Volusia County courtroom on Wednesday afternoon, August 16, just days before the case was slated to go to trial.
As per the court documents, besides the plea to felony DUI causing death, she also pleaded no contest to one felony charge of driving with license suspended causing death, four misdemeanor counts of DUI with damage to a person, and two misdemeanor charges of DUI with damage to property.
What was the cause of the accident?
Sunny has been in jail since May 22 last year when she was charged by the prosecution for crashing her car into the rear of another vehicle that was stopped at a red light.
She was unable to prevent her Mercedes from colliding with the rear of a Kia Sorento, causing fatal injuries to the driver, Julian Lasseter Jr.
The former WWE superstar had a blood alcohol content of .08 or higher at the time of the accident, said the officials. She had at first received bond in the case but was put back in jail just days later after prosecutors called her a danger to the community.
How did the incident affect Sunny's career?
Tammy Sytch rose to fame as one of the most popular WWE divas in the 1990s and also became the most downloaded celebrity on the internet in 1996. She got inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2011.
Sunny declined a lucrative offer from Playboy to pose nude at the peak of her career but later worked for money on an adult content website from 2001 to 2003.
She also redirected her career by joining OnlyFans as an adult content creator years later. Before the fatal accident, she had been arrested six times for driving under the influence, and in 2022 she was also arrested for threatening a man with scissors after consuming drugs and alcohol.
