Murder Charge Sought for Fatal Las Vegas Crash

Holloway told police she was trying to sleep in her auto with her daughter but “kept getting run off by security of the properties she stopped at”, according to her arrest report.

The Las Vegas Strip was blocked off after a auto mowed down more than 30 people Sunday night, authorities said.

Not long ago, the woman accused of crashing her auto into pedestrians on the Las Vegas Strip seemed to have turned her life around.

Authorities say Holloway repeatedly swerved onto a sidewalk packed with tourists in front of the Paris Las Vegas and Planet Hollywood casino-hotels.

Lakeisha Nicole Holloway, 24, appeared stone-faced during her initial hearing in Las Vegas Justice Court.

Attorneys for the woman accused of intentionally slamming her vehicle into pedestrians on the Las Vegas Strip – killing one person and injuring dozens of others – said Wednesday that she is “heartbroken” over the incident.

Lakeisha Holloway, 24, was clad in a blue jail jumpsuit with her hands cuffed to a chain around her waist, and appeared alert but subdued during an appearance in Clark County criminal court lasting less than five minutes.

Defense lawyer Joseph Abood later characterized Holloway as “distraught” and overwhelmed.

A judge set a January 20 date for a preliminary hearing of evidence that police say they’re still collecting.

Steven B. Wolfson said in a statement, adding that he was confident “we will be filing many more charges against Ms. Holloway”.

The felony child abuse and neglect charge accuses Holloway of endangering her daughter her in the vehicle. She was found outside the Tuscany hotel after driving a mile on a flat tire, according to police. She said she ultimately “beat the odds” to become the first member of her immediate family to graduate high school.

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said it’s not clear what may have caused Holloway to “snap”.

Holloway’s three year old daughter was in the back seat of the auto at the time, but has been put in protective custody. USA law enforcement agencies have been on heightened alert since a married couple inspired by Islamic militants killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, earlier this month.

Police and emergency crews respond to the scene of an incident along Las Vegas Boulevard, Sunday, Dec. 20, 2015, in Las Vegas. “She would not explain why she drove onto the sidewalk but remembered a body bouncing off her windshield, breaking it”.

Abood, who represented another driver in a similar crash on the Strip in September 2005, said he will need to see police reports, witness accounts and video before deciding on Holloway’s defense.

But Coffee says the fact that Holloway is on suicide watch shows jail officials also have concerns about her mental state. “I am a mature young woman”, she said in the video.

“Just because she’s charged doesn’t mean she’s guilty”, Abood told reporters.

Police said she was homeless and living out of her auto – an apparent regression to the former life she’d worked hard to escape.

Holloway didn’t resist when police arrived, and she spoke coherently about what happened, the sheriff said. They believed she was headed to Dallas to find her daughter’s father after they had a falling out.

The family of the person who was killed, Jessica Valenzuela of Buckeye, Ariz., a 32-year-old mother of three young girls, has raised more than $33,000 on the GoFundMe website for transportation and funeral costs.

Holloway told officers she was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash. “We just don’t know yet”.