Mum faces two years in jail for jaywalking
A mother convicted of jaywalking after her four-year-old son was run over and killed in a hit-and-run said the worst part of going to jail would be the separation from her two remaining kids.
Raquel Nelson from Marietta, Georgia, was convicted of second-degree homicide, reckless conduct and failure to use a crosswalk by a jury and faces sentencing tomorrow.
She can receive up to a three-year jail sentence, six times the stretch that Jerry Guy, who admitted to drinking before running over Nelson's son A.J., served.
"I think to come after me so much harder than they did him is a slap in the face because this will never end for me," she told NBC's Today.
"It's three years away from the two that I have left."
Nelson also said that the jury had "never been in my shoes," because each of them answered that they had never taken public transportation before.
Nelson, who doesn't have a car, decided to cross the street across from her apartment with her kids, rather than remain outside any later at night, when the accident occurred.
The driver of the car, Mr Guy, admitted he had been drinking and taking prescribed painkillers the night of the accident and had been convicted in two earlier hit-and-runs.
"We are just hoping as a family that [the judge] is compassionate and lets my niece remain with her other children," Nelson's aunt Loretta Williams said.
Nearly 75,000 have signed an online petition in support of Nelson.
