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Maryland bishop facing manslaughter charge in hit-and-run case

 
Bishop Cook is the No. 2 Episcopal leader in Maryland.
Bishop Cook is the No. 2 Episcopal leader in Maryland.
Published Jan. 10, 2015

BALTIMORE — In a spectacular fall from grace, Maryland's second-highest-ranking Episcopal leader and the first female bishop in her diocese was charged with drunken driving, manslaughter and other charges after fatally striking a cyclist in December.

Heather Cook, 58, turned herself in Friday to authorities.

The charges came less than a week after the national Episcopal Church announced it had opened an investigation into Cook.

On Dec. 27, Cook struck and killed Tom Palermo, 41, while he was riding his bicycle. He died of a head injury at a hospital later that day.

According to prosecutors, Cook left the scene for 30 minutes before returning, and registered a blood-alcohol content of 0.22 percent after the wreck. The legal limit in Maryland is 0.08 percent.

Less than four months earlier, Cook was ordained as the diocese of Maryland's first female bishop. Her father, also a priest, raised his family in the historic Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church rectory in downtown Baltimore.

But Cook's father, like her, had a history of alcohol abuse. In 1977, the Rev. Halsey Cook told the Old St. Paul's congregation in a sermon that he was an alcoholic suffering a relapse and seeking treatment, calling alcoholism "a rampant epidemic in our society" and a "fatal disease, not only of the body but of the mind and spirit," according to an article that year in the Baltimore Sun.

Heather Cook, too, has had problems with alcohol. In 2010, she was charged with drunken driving and received probation.

The Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, bishop of the diocese, said in a statement Friday that the community is "heartbroken."

"We cry for the Palermo family, our sister Heather and all in the community who are hurting," Sutton said.