Hit-and-run suspect was honored for turning her life around
Lakeisha Holloway, the 24-year-old woman accused of deliberately driving onto a packed sidewalk several times through a crowd of pedestrians along the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday, Dec. 20, was publicly honored for turning her life around from homelessness to a government job.
“Boy, have I come a long ways,” Holloway says in a 2012 video by the Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center, which helps at-risk youth with education and career training, according to CNN. “I was a scared little girl who knew that there was more to life outside of crime, drug addiction, lower income, alcoholism, being undereducated–all of which I grew up being familiar with.”
Everything changed on the night of Dec. 20, when police reported a fatal incident on Las Vegas Boulevard, steps away from the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino where the 2015 Miss Universe pageant was taking place before a live audience. The crash left one person dead, identified as 32-year-old Jessica Valenzuela. Dozens (at least 35 people) were reported injured, with multiple persons in critical condition.
“The videos obviously show intention,” said Nevada Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo in a press conference on Dec. 21. Videos from bystanders show Holloway driving her 1996 Oldsmobile sedan into the sidewalk, smashing into pedestrians, some of whom fought back by jumping onto the car. Holloway drove off from the scene and parked at a nearby hotel, the Tuscany Suites and Casino, before speaking with the valet/a security officer, admitting what she had done and telling them to call the police.
A 3-year-old toddler was discovered in the back seat, apparently Holloway’s daughter. The child was in good condition and is now under the care of child services, Lombardo said.
Metro Police Deputy Chief Brett Zimmerman denied initial reports that suggested the involvement of gunshots. “The preliminary investigation indicates [Holloway] jumped the curb just south of Paris Hotel, striking numerous pedestrians, before continuing north on Las Vegas Boulevard. The vehicle hit pedestrians in two separate locations—just before Paris and then in front of Paris,” Zimmerman said.
Holloway will be charged with murder with a deadly weapon (her car) and other charges related to the incident, which occurred at 6:38 pm on Sunday evening, reported USA Today. She also faces charges of leaving the scene of the accident, as well as child abuse or neglect.
Charges could be filed as early as Tuesday [Dec. 22], said Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson. Holloway is being held without bail at Clark County Detention Center.
In the arrest report, Holloway said she lived in Oregon and had been visiting Las Vegas for about a week, apparently living out of her car and parking it at garages throughout the city. After her arrest, Holloway told police she was in a “stressful period” that day, “where she was trying to rest/sleep inside her vehicle with her daughter, but kept getting run off by security of the properties she stopped at.”
“She ended up on the Strip, ‘a place she did not want to be,’” the report quotes Holloway as saying. “She would not explain why she drove onto the sidewalk but remembered a body bounding off her windshield, breaking it.”
“We are treating this as an intentional act,” said Metro Police homicide Lt. Dan McGrath, according to the Las Vegas Sun. Lombardo said Monday that he did not believe the incident was terrorism-related, but the department is “still working through it. We are not 100% ruling out the possibility of terrorism.”
Investigators said Holloway had run out of money and that she and her daughter had been living in the car. They believed she was headed to Dallas to find her daughter’s father after they had a falling out.
However, a family representative said that Holloway was not homeless, had a job, and came from a loving family. The representative declined to comment on what could have prompted the incident.
Holloway’s cousin, LaShay Hardaway, described her as “an overachiever” and “a hard-driven young mother” who spent long hours designing clothes and doing her best to support her young daughter, reported LA Times. “She’s never been homeless.”
“She was such a great kid while she was a part of our program,” said a youth employment staff member at Portland OIC, the non-profit that honored Holloway just years before.
Antonio Nassar told the Sun he had just walked out of Planet Hollywood when he saw the car roar onto the sidewalk, careening into pedestrians. It also briefly dragged a young boy, he said. “By the time I looked over to the right, all you could see was [her] driving away, and people were bouncing off the front of the car,” Nassar said.
The sound of the car hitting people was like “watermelons falling on the sidewalk,” he added. “It was chaotic. I was running down the street saying, ‘Move! Move! Get out of the way!’”
Another bystander, Justin Cochrane, said he and two other people had just sat down for dinner when the car began speeding onto the sidewalk.
“It was mayhem and it was very intentional,” Cochran told CNN. “People were flying. It was a sound I will never forget. It (the car) wasn’t hitting cars, it was hitting people. I’m shaken still.”
Clark County Fire Department spokesman Jeff Buchanan said six victims were transported to Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center and University Medical Center in critical condition. At 11:15 pm, authorities listed those six in stable condition. Victims also were sent to Spring Valley Hospital, according to Metro Police. Four victims were treated and released, including members of Oregon’s Pacific University wrestling team, who were in Las Vegas for a tournament.
The case eerily mirrored a fatal incident from ten years ago, when the driver of a stolen car deliberately plowed into pedestrians on the Strip, killing three people and injuring a dozen others. Stephen Ressa of Rialto, California, pleaded guilty but mentally ill and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In her video from 2012, Holloway said she was homeless in high school and nearly failing all her classes. Through the help of the Portland non-profit program, she graduated with a B+ average, went on to college and started working with the United States Forest Service.
“Today, I am not the same scared girl I used to be,” she says in the video. “I’m a mature young woman who has broken many generational cycle(s) that those before me hadn’t.”
