Mother Who Ran Girl Off Road Sentenced
A Lancaster judge has sentenced Ava Casey Brown to five years probation for running her 16-year-old daughter off the road in a high-speed car chase in 1987.
The judge’s decision was in line with an appeals court decision that threw out Brown’s original five-year prison term.
Brown, 37, of Littlerock, near Lancaster, was sent to state prison in 1987 for assault with a deadly weapon and child endangerment but was released eight months later by order of the state Court of Appeal.
In her ruling Thursday, Lancaster Superior Court Judge Margaret M. Grignon said Brown’s lack of a criminal record and the spontaneous nature of the crime made probation an appropriate punishment.
Brown, a nurse’s aide and Sunday school teacher, ran her daughter, Renee Casey, off the road in a car chase after Casey stayed out late without permission. Brown pursued Casey at speeds up to 80 m.p.h. and bumped her car at least twice, causing a crash in which Casey was uninjured but a teen-age passenger in her car suffered a broken collarbone.
Brown said her daughter, now 19, lives with relatives in Arizona and remains estranged from her.
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