Woman flips van with child inside

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Reports said a Cambridge Avenue woman is facing charges of child endangering and fleeing and eluding after she failed to pull over for police early Thursday, and then flipped her vehicle with a small child inside who was not buckled into a car seat.

Just after midnight, an officer tried to pull over a van driven by Alexis Tensley, 28, after he saw it going about 60 mph down a residential street.

The van went through a yard in the 100 block of East Myrtle Avenue before coming back to the road, hitting an embankment and flipping onto its hood, reports said.

Officers saw the child in the passenger seat along with Tensley, who is the child’s mother. Police smashed the window to get them out, but Tensley refused to give the child to police, reports said. Officer Tim Edwards then went into the van, grabbed the child and took the child out.

Reports did not list the age or gender of the child.

Firefighters cut Tensley out of the wreckage, and she and the child were both taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital. At the hospital, the child was given to a relative, reports said.

Tensley also is facing a charge of driving under suspension. Court records show she has been driving without a license since at least 2010, when she pleaded guilty in Mahoning County Area Court in Boardman to driving without a license.

Edwards, who has been with the department since 2013, has won two lifesaving awards from the department, one for reviving an infant who had no pulse and another for entering a burning home along with several other officers and pulling a woman out who was attacked by a murder suspect.