GARNETT—A Chanute woman driving a car that crashed and killed a teenage girl near Colony 21 months ago has been convicted of vehicular homicide.
Connie McCormick, 47, was driving home from a Kansas City-area methadone clinic May 27, 2010 in a 1999 Ford Expedition while her 13-year-old niece, Mary Jane Robertson, lay in the rear of the vehicle.
McCormick and Robertson were traveling southbound on U.S. 169 when the vehicle entered the ditch and vaulted over a culvert at 700 Road. Landing on the south side of 700 Road, the vehicle rolled end-to-end two times and ejected the Royster Middle School student through the rear hatch.
Robertson, not wearing a seatbelt, was dead at the scene.
McCormick entered a guilty plea Thursday to the vehicular homicide charge under the agreement the other charges against her — involuntary manslaughter, failing to have proper license, operating an unregistered vehicle and driving without properly restraining a child — would be dropped.
An Anderson Counted judge threw out a second-degree murder charge against McCormick in November.
Vehicular homicide, a class A misdemeanor, carries a sentence of up to a year in county jail.
