Woman at center of hit-and-run mystery arrested for drug possession

By Erica Morse
Publisher, Victims News Online
Updated 8:15 a.m., August 20, 2025
erica@victimsnewsonline.com

Editor’s note: Wojasinski’s last name is misspelled in court records, being mislabeled as ‘WOJANSINSKI‘.

(PORTER COUNTY, INDIANA) — A woman at the center of a 2020 hit-and-run mystery that took the life of a beloved medical professional has been arrested for felony drug possession in Porter County, Indiana.

Thirty-seven-year-old Amanda Michelle Wojasinski, whose address in arrest records is listed as 406 Spruce Drive, Trail Creek, Indiana, was arrested Friday evening, August 15, 2025, in neighboring Porter County. She is charged with three separate counts: including felony possession of cocaine greater than five grams, as well as misdemeanor charges of possession of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

In 2020, Wojasinski became a key figure in the mysterious hit-and-run death of forty-six-year-old Tara Stevens. Stevens was hit while crossing the road with a friend to enter Creekside Bar and Grill, shortly before midnight, on September 12, 2020, in Michigan City, Indiana. She died from her injuries 10 days later at Memorial Hospital of South Bend, after being airlifted from the scene.

Wojasinski, a then-server at the now-defunct Creekside, is reported to have served Tara Stevens alcohol, just hours before she was hit and struck while crossing the road, to return to the bar, where she had been earlier in the evening for the fundraiser.

Stevens was a surgical assistant at Memorial Hospital of South Bend, the same facility where she passed away, but she was born in raised in Michigan City and was loved by many in the community.

At the time of the crash, a fundraiser was being held at the bar, benefiting a local man who had been involved in a motorcycle accident. Approximately 80 people were present; while many were inside, an outside tent just yards away from the crash site was full of people attending the benefit.

With all those people present, police claim they cannot solve the case, and time is allegedly running out to charge anyone involved.

However, many in the community — including our team — do not believe the narrative police are providing to the press and the public, and fear a cover-up is involved, partly for the following reasons:

• Creekside Bar and Grill had three owners at the time of the crash. One, a local criminal defense attorney named Christopher Willoughby, a lawyer at the firm of Braje, Nelson and Janes; another, a man named Patrick Gondeck, the relative of a person of interest whom police claim was cleared early on in the investigation.
  
• Although vehicle parts taken from Stevens’ body were identified as being from a 2012-2017 black GMC Terrain within hours of the crash, the Michigan City Police Department did not release that information for 19 days.
  
• In addition to working for Willoughby at Creekside Bar as a server, Wojasinski was also employed as a legal professional at the law firm of Braje, Nelson, and Janes in Michigan City, Indiana; Creekside Bar owner Christopher Willoughby is a practicing lawyer at that firm. Furthermore, Willoughby, Wojasinski and the firm of Braje, Nelson, and Janes, volunteered to handle the unsupervised and expedited estate claim for Tara Stevens’ family after she was killed.
  
• Several off-duty officers from the Michigan City Police Department and LaPorte County Sheriff’s Department were present at the time Stevens was hit, yet none of them could provide any information to assist their own department in solving the case.
  
• Video surveillance footage from Creekside Bar and Grill was mysteriously erased within minutes of the crash, and no one has been identified as the person who erased it. Although never accused, Wojasinski made public statements on social media in 2022 that she was not the person who erased surveillance footage from Creekside the night Tara Stevens was fatally injured.
  
• Several hundred pictures and videos from that night — including those associated with the fundraiser — also mysteriously disappeared from the Internet within days of Stevens being hit.
  
• The jurisdiction in charge of investigating appears to be the wrong one
  • Trail Creek Police initially responded to the call and handed over the case to neighboring Michigan City Police Department. However, jurisdiction indicates the LaPorte County Sheriff’s Department should have taken over, leaving many to question ‘why’ the shift occurred.
    
• Witnesses reported to VNO that, immediately following the crash, LaPorte County Sheriff’s Department Chief of Detectives Andrew ‘Andy’ Hynek was reportedly pulling at medical professionals who were trying to render aid to Tara Stevens, claiming those individuals could be charged, as they had also been drinking at the benefit.
  • However, Indiana’s Good Samaritan Law allows for medical professionals — even while intoxicated — to render aid during an emergency situation, without fear of civil liability. To date, no investigation into those claims has been launched against Hynek.
    
• Four additional witnesses, all of whom came forward to our team — insist there were at least two, if not three, vehicles involved in hitting Tara Stevens, and that one of them may have been an Indiana State Police officer.
  
• Medical records provided to our team by the Stevens family revealed injuries that are consistent with being hit by multiple vehicles.

In 2021, a witness told our team that two men (whom the witness identified by name) were reportedly racing towards Creekside Bar and Grill and were stopped at a stoplight at the intersection of Michigan Boulevard and Johnson Road, in Trail Creek, Indiana. When the stoplight turned green, Tara Stevens was hit from the direction of Johnson Road, approximately 30 seconds later.

A second witness — who was outside the bar smoking a cigarette at the time of the crash — asserts Stevens was actually hit by two vehicle(s), both which fled the scene — and that one resembled a white police SUV, possibly a Dodge Durango, which is the model driven by Indiana State Police.

And in 2022, yet another witness came forward, claiming an Indiana State Police officer was attempting to bribe auto body shop owners, days after Stevens was hit, to fix front-end damage to his government-issued police vehicle, ‘off the books for cash’, without alerting the state police of the damage.

A report filed by our team with ISP’s Internal Affairs regarding that tip has gone ignored for the last three years.

To date, no one has been arrested in connection with the death of Tara Stevens. Yesterday, an official with the Michigan City Police Department told the Northwest Indiana Times that only one month remains to charge anyone on the case, and that his department has exhausted all leads.

Yesterday, a Porter County judge set Wojasinski’s bond at $1,500 cash only, and no date has yet been set for her arraignment. At time of print, Wojasinski is no longer listed as being incarcerated at the Porter County Jail.

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