Conviction for hit-and-run fatality affirmed

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The conviction of a driver who struck and killed a woman while she walked on a busy street during a rainstorm was affirmed Monday by the Indiana Court of Appeals.

Gregory Hudson of Shelbyville was convicted in a Marion Superior bench trial of Class C felony failure to stop after an accident resulting in death. Hudson was driving a pickup that struck and killed Kathleen Clark on South Meridian Street in Indianapolis. Clark had been walking in the street because large bushes prevented her from walking next to it, according to the record.

Hudson was charged after police received an anonymous tip that he was involved in the crash and was questioned at work. The record says Hudson initially denied involvement but later admitted he was involved but didn’t know that he had hit a person.

“This case turns on what Hudson knew about the accident in which Kathleen was killed. The trial court ultimately determined that Hudson knew that an accident with injury had occurred, and we agree,” Chief Judge Nancy Vaidik wrote for the court in Gregory Hudson v. State of Indiana, 49A05-1404-CR-162. The evidence was sufficient to support the conviction, the panel concluded.

“Finally, Hudson attacks his conviction — and Section 9-26-1-1 — by arguing that he might have been unable to comply with the statute if he had he returned to the scene of the accident, because he might not have discovered Kathleen’s body,” Vaidik wrote.

“But Hudson was not prosecuted for such hypothetical failures. … (W)e decline to speculate about what might have occurred if Hudson had returned to the scene of the accident.”

 

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