State briefs

A Fulton County judge sentenced Gage Rogers on Tuesday after the Akron, Indiana, man had pleaded guilty to two felony hit-and-run charges in the crash that killed Brelynna Felix.

The judge suspended about half of the sentence, and Rogers will serve part of it on either home detention or through community corrections, WSBT-TV reported.

The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office said dispatchers were alerted in November 2021 that a child may have been struck by a vehicle along State Road 19.

First responders found a 15-year-old boy who had been struck and injured before they found Brelynna, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

Judge rejects reduced prison time in deadly wrong-way crash

NEW ALBANY — A southern Indiana judge has rejected a reduced prison sentence for a Kentucky woman who pleaded guilty in a wrong-way freeway crash that killed three people and an unborn child.

A Floyd County judge reduced Taylor’s Barefoot’s eight years of probation to six years last week, but kept her prison sentence at 12 years, the News and Tribune reported.

The Louisville, Kentucky, woman was charged in the March 7, 2020, crash deaths of Taylor Cole, 21; Leah Onstott-Dunn, 22; Cole’s 3-year-old son, Braxton Fields, and her unborn child. Onstott-Dunn’s 3-year-old child was in the car but survived the crash.

Barefoot was driving in the wrong direction in the westbound lanes of Interstate 265 in Floyd County when her vehicle struck Cole’s car. She pleaded guilty last year to three felony counts of operating while intoxicated causing death and a felony involuntary manslaughter charge.

According to evidence and testimony, Barefoot had been at a work party in downtown Jeffersonville and was seen on video consuming five mixed drinks over about two hours. Her blood-alcohol content after the crash was 0.30, nearly four times Indiana’s legal limit for driving of 0.08.

Floyd County Prosecutor Chris Lane said he’s glad the judge chose to keep Taylor’s executed prison sentence unchanged following a hearing last month where relatives of those killed protested outside the county courthouse against cutting her prison time.