A Florida woman has been accused of killing her twin sister by intentionally driving off a cliff in Hawaii during an argument, according to KHON 2 News.
Alexandria Duval, 37, was driving her Ford Explorer on the Hana Highway in Maui with her twin sister, Anastasia. Witness accounts say the SUV accelerated into a jagged rock wall before tumbling off the side of the cliff. Alexandria survived the 200-foot fall—Her sister was not so lucky.
Duval appeared in court on Monday facing charges for second-degree murder, KHON reports. She is currently being held without bail.
Recent witness testimonies and court documents reveal the bizarre backstory to the deadly incident. Apparently, the women were fighting before the crash. “The passenger was pulling at the driver’s hair and the steering wheel,” according to one witness account. Lawrence Lau told KHON that he saw the twins arguing, as well. Lau then watched as the SUV sped past him and plummeted off of the cliff.
“I saw a pair of hands jerking the head, pulling the hair,” Lau said. “My first thought when she was coming past us was, ‘Don’t hit me, don’t hit me,’ because she was slightly out of control… I’m amazed that that lady survived. I am really amazed because I saw how far she fell.”
The Associated Press reported that the SUV’s air-bag control module showed that the driver never even attempted to brake. Even more disturbing, investigators found that the steering wheel made a sharp left, straight into the wall, before the car fell off the cliff.
According to Cosmopolitan, both of the women’s pasts are a little murky. Their original names are actually Alison and Ann Dadow. In 2008, they opened a seemingly successful yoga studio together in Florida called Twin Power Yoga. However, the studio abruptly closed in 2014. They then opened up another studio in Utah, which also closed. The twins later filed for bankruptcy, claiming they were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. According to the AP, the pair had run-ins with the law in both Florida and Utah, as well as in North Carolina. Finally, they arrived in Hawaii in December, reportedly with plans to open another yoga studio, and began going by Alexandria and Anastasia Duval.
Alexandria’s lawyer, Todd Eddins, is denying that she purposely harmed her sister, KHON reports. “Alison did not try to harm herself or the person she most loved and was closest to in the world,” Eddins said in court on Monday. The details of this heartbreaking tragedy are too strange to tell whether Alexandria/Alison killed her sister in a fit of rage or if it was just an unfortunately-timed accident.