ROCHESTER — A special prosecutor will be named to decide whether Brittany Ingle will face charges following a courtroom incident in Northern Indiana.
Ingle is the mother of the three children who died in a school bus stop accident in October of last year. The woman charged in that case, Alyssa Shepherd, was sentenced on Wednesday.
As the hearing concluded at the Fulton County Courthouse in Rochester, Ingle struck Shepherd as she was being escorted outside. Officers took Ingle into custody and placed her in handcuffs.
The question now is whether Ingle will face formal charges. Fulton County Prosecutor Michael Marrs says he is requesting a special prosecutor to make that decision. "We have been working closely with Brittany and her family over the past 14 months and do not feel we can be objectively unbiased if we were to file charges or not," said Marrs.
Marrs described what happened Wednesday. "As the defendant was being escorted out of the courtroom, the victim’s mother, Brittany Ingle, basically went at the defendant and struck her with either a hand or face or elbow and struck her in the facial area," Marrs said. "It appears that she struck her or that she hit her and she made contact and she may have hit the wall, but there appears to be maybe a bit of a mark. She was moving to the door and Brittany came out of her seat and went at her and got a strike in of some kind.”
Shepherd received four years in prison, three years of home detention and three years probation, along with a 10-year driver's license suspension.
RELATED | Alyssa Shepherd, who killed 3 kids at Fulton County bus stop, sentenced to 4 years in prison
On Oct. 18, a jury in Fulton County convicted Shepherd of three counts of reckless homicide, one count of passing a school bus causing injury and one count of criminal recklessness resulting in serious bodily injury.
Ingle told reporters after Shepherd's conviction she did not believe Shepherd showed any remorse at the trial.
"What I want to tell you as a mother, from one mother to another, when I was sitting up there giving my testimony, I looked at her straight in the eyes because you just want some feeling you just want something and she gave nothing," Ingle said Oct. 18. "I was crying telling them how I found my sons in the road and she had no remorse, no emotion, and that hurt worse because she acted as if our kids were in the way, and if they were, they kind of ruined her life and she ruined ours."
PREVIOUS | 3 siblings hit, killed while crossing the street to get on the school bus in Fulton County | Uncle remembers 3 siblings killed at Fulton Co. bus stop: "beautiful kids taken for no reason"
Copyright 2019 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.CURATION BY
