Woman sentenced to probation for hit skip at vigil

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A woman who pleaded guilty to driving into a crowd during a vigil for a man killed in a hit-and-run accident was sentenced to five years’ probation Thursday.

Rochelle Taylor, 21, was sentenced for the Feb. 8 accident on Hylda Avenue on the South Side. She pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident.

Police said Taylor ran into a crowd that was having a vigil for 23-year-old Robert Brown, who was killed about a week earlier at just about the same spot, also by a hit-and-run driver.

Police traced the car to a West Side apartment complex and interviewed Taylor, who at first denied involvement in the accident but later changed her story and admitted she was driving.

She also said the car she was driving was not hers, and she admitted she did not have a driver’s license.

She was not indicted until August because it took police a long time to find her and interview her because she had no fixed address.

A man also was indicted about the same time in Brown’s death and last week received an eight-year prison sentence.