ALFRED — A Sanford woman charged with the hit-and-run death of a West Newfield man as she drove off a Sanford baseball field last June is scheduled to appear in York County Superior Court on Tuesday.
A Rule 11 hearing, which indicates a change of plea, has been scheduled for Tuesday afternoon for Carol Sharrow.
Police said Sharrow, 52, drove her car through the main gate and onto the field at Goodall Park on June 1 during a Babe Ruth League baseball game. A video posted by a witness on Facebook that night shows players scattering as the car careened around the field.
In November, Sharrow entered pleas of not guilty and not criminally responsible to manslaughter and more than a dozen other charges concerning the death of Douglas Parkhurst and her alleged behavior on the ballfield.
Police said Sharrow’s car struck Parkhurst as she exited the ballpark and kept driving. Parkhurst, 68, died on the way to the hospital.
Sharrow is represented by attorneys Annie Stevens and Robert Ruffner. Neither responded to messages left at their office late last week.
Assistant York County District Attorney Thad West declined comment.
Stevens said in November that a not criminally responsible plea means the defendant did not have the ability at the time of the incident to appreciate the wrongfulness of her behavior.
“She has come a long way,” said Stevens, who said Sharrow has been engaged in treatment. “She is in a very different mental state.”
A York County grand jury handed up a 15-count indictment against Sharrow in October. Besides manslaughter, Sharrow is charged with elevated aggravated assault, driving to endanger, leaving the scene of an accident and 11 counts of reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon.
During her initial court appearance in June, Sharrow was ordered held on $500,000 bail and was required to undergo a mental health evaluation. In October, a judge ordered Sharrow to remain at Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta, where she has been receiving treatment, as the case proceeds, court documents show.
Parkhurst confessed in 2013 to the then-unsolved hit-and-run death of a 4-year-old girl in Fulton, New York, in 1968, when he was 18 years old.
He was a Vietnam War veteran and a grandfather and had moved to West Newfield about five years ago. He had gone to the ballpark that Friday night to watch his grandson play baseball.
Tammy Wells can be contacted at 780-9016 or at:
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