Bride's Life Ends in Wedding-Day Tragedy: Patch PM

Newlywed Bride’s Life Ends Minutes After Her Vows

Jana Miles-Burnett had just vowed to have and to hold William Burnett, for better or worse. They wed Saturday night in a small town in southern Illinois. With their family and friends gathering three miles down the road for the reception, the worst would come without warning and ever so fast just minutes later. On their way to the reception astride Burnett’s motorcycle, a deer leapt onto the country highway and into Burnett’s path. He struck the deer, crashed the bike, and 40-year-old newlywed bride Jana Miles-Burnett, who’d recently found love, lost her life. “The wedding was filled with the most laughter I’d ever seen in my life,” her daughter, Sara Smillie, 22, told the Southern Illinoisan. “I hadn’t seen her that happy in a long time.”

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