‘Screaming Banshee’ charged in fatal DUI after running down 73-year-old Bostonian — and its just the latest in a string of arrests

A New Jersey woman charged with drunkenly running down and killing an elderly Boston man has a string of arrests for reckless driving, disorderly conduct, and assault going back over a decade — including two in recent months that earned her the nickname “Screaming Banshee.”

Lauren Mullins, 32, was arrested in Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 21 after allegedly slamming her SUV into 73-year-old Daniel O’Neil, who was driving a moped around 1:30 a.m. through a quiet intersection near the MIT campus.

The collision sent O’Neil flying into an MIT police cruiser, and carried off the to hospital with grievous injuries. He died two days later, WCVB reported.

Mullins — a New Jersey native and Suffolk University graduate who recently sat the bar exam — was allegedly found drunk at the carnage-filled scene, and arrested on the spot.

“Officers were unable to conduct a standardized field sobriety test due to the defendant’s belligerent nature and behavior,” Massachusetts prosecutors said last week as she appeared in court.

She was charged with operating under the influence of liquor with serious bodily injury, along with negligent operation of a motor vehicle.

But it was just Mullins’ latest arrest in what appears to be a years-long path of drunken destruction — and O’Neil’s family is baffled by why she was allowed on the streets.

“This seems like something that totally could’ve been avoided had people gotten her help in her life,” O’Neil’s niece, Meredith, told WBZ.

New Jersey records under her name show arrests for the likes of assault, resisting arrest, speeding, and disorderly conduct going back to 2014.

Before the Cambridge incident her most recent arrest was in Hoboken on January 31, which was captured on bodycam footage published by Transparency Bodycam — and showed her severely inebriated on a nighttime sidewalk and bellowing herself horse at officers who confronted her.

Just months earlier, she was arrested again outside of a bar on October 24. Bodycam footage from that incident captured repeatedly screaming “I know my right to remain silent” at officers called to the scene.

“I’m smarter than all of you combined, I have a law degree,” she yelled from inside the squad car after she was detained and carried away, the footage shows.

Then in a third video from January 2023, she was filmed apparently wasted hurling abuse at officers who responded to calls from neighbors who said she had drunkenly picked a fight with them.

Mullins was finally restrained and hauled off to a hospital because of her inebriation in that incident, which appears to have earned her a charge for assault on a law enforcement officer.

Mullins may have been severely injured in a car accident in Arizona, according to a 2023 GoFundMe — though the details of that incident remain unclear.

“On Thursday February 9th, Lauren was involved in a terrible car accident in Scottsdale, Arizona. She was hit by a car and sustained several injuries including a fractured shoulder, pelvis and C6 vertebrae,” the GoFundMe read, indicating she was hospitalized for weeks after undergoing extensive surgery.

Prosecutors with the Middlesex County district attorney’s office said she also had a record in Massachusetts.

Mullins attorneys argued in court that she was “curable” and claimed her recent behavior was not a lifelong pattern.

O’Neil’s niece disagreed.

“She doesn’t feel remorse. She’s not sorry. She’s only sorry because she has to pay for it,” O’Neil said.

Following please from prosecutors, Mullins was ordered held on an increased $65,000 cash bail.