Following a two-day trial, a DeKalb County jury awarded more than $5.3 million to the children of a woman killed by a drunken driver heading the wrong way on I-20 in the early morning hours of July 5, 2008.

The conservator for the children won a $1.75 million default judgment in 2011 against a now-defunct strip club where the man had reportedly been drinking, and the defense in the just-concluded case argued unsuccessfully that the club should have been included on the verdict form for apportioned liability.

Plaintiffs attorney Trent Speckhals said testimony indicated that the at-fault driver, Otis South, had spent July 4 driving around to barbecues and drinking with friends before plowing his stepson's Lincoln Town Car into a Pontiac Sunbird carrying three young women on I-20 near Douglasville.