Woman charged in deadly crash on Vegas Strip is due in court

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

PHOTO:Police and emergency crews respond to the scene of an incident along Las Vegas Boulevard, Dec. 20, 2015, in Las Vegas. LaShay Hardaway, a cousin, said Holloway, a women’s clothing designer, had stopped in Las Vegas twice as part of a long road trip: once last week and once on Sunday.

An Oregon woman who drove into a crowded Las Vegas pavement has been charged with murder on Tuesday.

Lakeisha Holloway is charged with murder, child abuse and hit-and-run.

Joseph Abood, one of Holloway’s public defense attorneys, said his client plans to plead not guilty. In Nevada, the plea is assumed during an initial court appearance.

“We can all agree this is a shocking and tragic event”, Abood said as he expressed sympathy for the families of Jessica Valenzuela and at least 35 people injured in the Sunday evening crash near the Paris Las Vegas resort.

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.

Three victims remained hospitalised in a critical condition on Tuesday and two were in a serious condition, an area hospital said.

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.

Holloway remains on suicide watch in jail, where she is being held without bail. The child was not injured, officials said. The video may not be made public until a later court hearing.

Surveillance video from the scene showed that Holloway’s act of driving into pedestrians appeared to be “intentional”.

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson says additional charges are likely, depending on results of drug and alcohol tests and the police investigation.

In addition to murder, she has been charged with child abuse or neglect, and with leaving the scene of a collision, according to the criminal complaint filed in Clark County court.

In October she changed her name to Paris Paradise Morton.

Several years ago, Holloway, a graduate of an alternative high school, received an award for overcoming adversity from the nonprofit Portland Opportunities Industrial Center.

“Today, I am not the same scared girl I used to be”, she said in the video. “I’m a mature young woman who has broken many generational cycle(s) that those before me hadn’t”.

The U.S. Forest Service hired her to do administrative work in its Portland office.

In her 2012 video, Holloway said she was homeless in high school and almost failing all her classes. She took a four-month break in late 2010.

A spokesman for the Oregon Department of Transportation, Ms Sally Ridenour, said Holloway had her driving licence suspended in 2012 for failing to comply with insurance requirements. She might have been on her way to Texas to find the estranged father of her daughter, authorities said.

She told police she ended up on the Strip, “a place she did not want to be”.

She allegedly drove the 1996 Oldsmobile sedan with OR plates onto the sidewalk at different spots.

People jumped on the vehicle and banged on its windows, but Holloway didn’t stop driving on the sidewalk, Lombardo said.

She parked at a casino a few blocks from the Strip, told a parking attendant that she had run down people and asked the valet to call 911, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said.

The sheriff said Holloway was very stoic and did not appear to be “distressed” from her actions.