There's A Lot To Process In This Story Of A Woman Who Drove Onto A Little League Field

A 51-year-old woman was arrested after she drove her car on a little league baseball field Friday night in Sanford, Maine, leading to one person dead. Carol Sharrow was charged with manslaughter in the death of 68-year-old Douglas Parkhurst, but it turned out that this tragedy was somehow even darker than it already appeared.

Here’s a brief video of the car on the field; Parkhurst was struck in the parking lot and died from his injuries while being transported to the hospital.

There’s an eerie coincidence involving the victim. Parkhurst, who according to witnesses tried to close a gate so Sharrow couldn’t escape, was behind the wheel of a car on Halloween night in 1968 when he hit 4-year-old Carolee Ashby in Fulton, N.Y. At the time, then-18-year-old Parkhurst explained away the damage to his car to police, but in 2013 he confessed. Syracuse.com wrote a series on the hit-and-run in 2014:

It was just before 6:30 p.m. and children were going door-to-door trick-or-treating. It was already dark on that brisk, chilly night. Darlene held her sister’s hand. Their cousin darted across the street, turned and waited.

The Ashby sisters were about halfway across the intersection when Darlene felt a tug.

“For a second, I didn’t know if somebody had tried to grab Carolee from me,” Darlene said years later in a deposition. “...I knew immediately that Carolee was not there.”

Parkhurst moved to Maine after confessing. He had no ties to Sharrow, who has two previous convictions for drunken driving. Darlene, who was holding her sister’s hand the night she died 50 years ago, said she felt like she has gained some closure from Parkhurst’s death. Now Darlene Ashby McCann, she told the Portland Press Herald that she was “overwhelmed by it all”:

“I know my mom would have been grateful that children were saved. Sometime I may be able to forgive him, but not right now,” McCann said.

She was in Texas for a granddaughter’s high school graduation Saturday when she heard about Parkhurst’s death.

“It feels it has made a full circle. Now I am relieved. I truly am. The same thing that happened to my sister happened to him. It made a complete circle. Now it is time to move on,” McCann said.

She said she has suffered from depression since her sister’s death.

[ WMTW | Portland Press Herald]

H/t to Mike