Charges against an Edinburgh woman who was charged in a fatal crash in Brown County in 2018 have been dropped, after more data was received that showed she may not have been on her cellphone at the time of the crash.
On Sept. 21, Brown County Prosecutor Ted Adams filed a motion to dismiss charges against Sheila Hendricks, 44, of Bartholomew County. Judge Mary Wertz granted that motion on Sept. 25.
The case against Hendricks was scheduled to go before a jury on Oct. 20.
The case was dismissed after receiving information from General Motors’ OnStar service after months of waiting. The OnStar collision notification and the timestamp of the last text message Hendricks sent before the crash were separated by 2½ minutes, Adams said in an email earlier this month.
The three-vehicle crash happened on Nov. 9, 2018, near Nelson Ridge Road. One woman was killed and three people were injured.
“We had a circumstantial case, and our proposed timeline was critical to our case,” Adams said.
In August 2019, Hendricks was charged with reckless homicide, a Level 5 felony; texting while driving, a Class C infraction; and three counts of criminal recklessness, all Class B misdemeanors.
Indiana State Police Det. Paul Suding had come upon the crash while he was off duty. Suding told Det. Brian Shrader at that time that Hendricks, the driver who rear-ended the first vehicle, was on her phone texting someone when he arrived on scene, and that he believed she may have been driving distracted when the crash occurred, according to a report Shrader wrote.
Shrader reviewed the accident scene and reported coming to a similar conclusion. Shrader also reported that Hendricks’ vehicle showed no signs of slowing down before it struck the first car.
Shrader asked Hendricks what she had looked up from when she saw that the car in front of her was stopping. She said she was looking at the window and mentioned a bug being on it, but detectives noted that the temperature on the day of the crash was 36 degrees, their report said.
Hendricks hit the car in front of her. That driver was not injured. Her vehicle then left the westbound lane and struck another one head-on.
The driver of that vehicle was flown to the hospital for internal injuries to her entire body. The front-seat passenger was taken to the hospital by ambulance for an internal abdomen/pelvis injury. The victim in the backseat was declared dead at the scene by Coroner Earl Pipe due to catastrophic injuries, the police report said.
Adams said earlier this month that Hendricks was distracted while driving and had been continuously texting while traveling on State Road 46 East, but that her actions did not meet the legal standard for reckless conduct.
“Ms. Hendricks’ distracted driving resulted in the death of a human being. However, we do not criminalize negligent behavior in the state of Indiana and the Legislature does not wish to criminalize accidental behavior unless it reaches a point of recklessness,” he said.
Reckless conduct is “conduct that is a plain, conscious and unjustifiable disregard of harm” and the disregard “involves a substantial deviation from acceptable standards of conduct,” Adams said.
“We have all been distracted by driving, each and every one of us,” he continued.
“To make such a distraction a criminal act, the distraction would have to be a substantial deviation from acceptable standards of conduct, such as texting while driving.”
A law which went into effect July 1, 2020, now makes it illegal for a driver to be using a handheld phone behind the wheel. Hands-free devices are still OK. Indiana has had a law against texting while driving since 2011, but a court of appeals found it to be unenforceable.
Because of her complete lack of stopping, police and the prosecution believed Hendricks was distracted by her phone and not an insect. But the OnStar data provided “a reasonable theory of innocence,” Adams said.
The state could not account for the 2 1/2-minute gap from the time of the crash to the time Hendricks sent her last text message, so the state had to dismiss the case.
Adams met with the loved ones of the crash victim late last month to let them know the case was being dismissed. Those who survived the crash are also still suffering, including the family of the victim and the driver who had to learn to walk again, Adams added.
“They all stoically understood the decision and how hard it was to make,” he said.
The victims could still pursue the case on the civil side, he said.
