COFFEE COUNTY, Tenn. (WGNS News) – The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld a 12-year prison sentence for a man convicted of driving into oncoming traffic and causing a head-on collision that killed a Riverdale High School graduate and former cheerleader in 2021.
Twenty-two-year-old Katie Leigh Bauer was completing her psychology degree at Middle Tennessee State University and planning to marry her fiancé, Jacob Meaker. Following her death, friends and relatives spoke of the many dreams and goals she had for her future, including her hope of becoming a mother one day.
Bauer, who attended New Vision Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, never had the opportunity to fulfill those plans. Jonathan Andrew Berretta, who was 43 at the time, drove while intoxicated and struck the vehicle that Bauer was in head-on, ending her life and leaving her family and friends to cope with an immeasurable loss…