A woman who police say killed one person and wounded dozens of others when she drove her car onto the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday night has been charged with murder. She is also charged with child abuse and leaving the scene of an accident, according to court documents.
As NPR reported Monday, Lakeisha Holloway of Oregon crashed into pedestrians with her car while her 3-year-old daughter was in the back seat. She then drove to a hotel and asked a valet to call the police.
"When a person drives a 2,000-pound-plus motor vehicle intentionally onto a sidewalk, killing and injuring scores of people, that's murder," District Attorney Steven Wolfson said yesterday, according to the Associated Press.
Holloway denied being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and police would not comment on her motive for driving onto the sidewalk, the news service said. Since Holloway's arrest, more details about her life have come out. From the AP:
"[Police] say she was homeless, and out of money, sleeping in her car in parking garages. She might have been on her way to Texas to meet with the father of her daughter after the pair had split up some time ago.
"After her arrest, Holloway 'described a stressful period today where she was trying to rest/sleep inside her vehicle with her daughter but kept getting run off by security of the properties she stopped at,' a police report states.
" 'She ended up on the Strip ... a place she did not want to be,' the report quoted her as saying. 'She would not explain why she drove onto the sidewalk but remembered a body bouncing off her windshield, breaking it.' "
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