A woman who admitted being intoxicated when she fatally struck a 62-year-old jogger in a 2014 hit-and-run crash in the Westchester area has been sentenced to six years in prison, prosecutors announced Friday.
Brittnee Monique Crawford’s sentencing comes about six weeks after she pleaded no contest to a count of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, according to a news release from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
The victim, Paul Kevin Grover, was struck and killed while on a pre-dawn jog near Lincoln Boulevard and Loyola Marymount Drive on Jan. 9, 2014, authorities said.
Crawford is accused of fleeing the scene, initially telling a bystander she would take the fatally wounded victim to the hospital, Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Robert Long said after the woman’s arrest in 2018. But when police arrived at the scene, the defendant allegedly fled on foot.
A witness described the driver as being highly intoxicated at the time, and evidence in the car also indicated she was impaired, according to LAPD.
She wasn’t charged with DUI, however, because it would have been “almost impossible” to prove she was under the influence without evidence of her blood-alcohol level close to the time of the collision, said LAPD Detective James Dixon, who investigated the case.
Police spent two years building the case, which resulted in an arrest warrant for Crawford in February. But officers couldn’t locate the woman, and she wasn’t taken into custody until nearly two years later.
Crawford’s boyfriend, Joshua Walker, was also arrested in January 2018 after being accused of lying to detectives who had been trying to locate the suspect.
A felony charge of accessory after the fact against him was dismissed earlier this year, according to the DA’s office.