Background: The intersection of McArtan Road and Elliott Bridge Road in Linden, North Carolina, the location of the crash (Google Maps). Insets (from left to right): Goldie and Sharon Marsh (Harnett County Sheriff”s Office).
A 40-year-old woman crashed her vehicle in rural North Carolina, killing her passenger, then fled and asked her mother to pick her up, authorities say.
Goldie Marsh faces a slew of charges, including felony death by vehicle, felony hit-and-run causing serious injury or death, driving while impaired, failure to report an accident, and failure as a driver to wear a seat belt, according to court records reviewed by Law&Crime. Her mother, 67-year-old Sharon Marsh, stands charged with felony obstructing justice, aiding and abetting, and resisting a public officer.
The charges stem from the crash that killed 45-year-old Timothy McLean.
On Saturday at about noon, Goldie Marsh was driving herself and McLean in a gray car near the intersection of McArtan Road and Elliott Bridge Road in Linden, North Carolina, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol told Raleigh-based NBC affiliate WRAL. She is believed to have been speeding in the area some 25 minutes north of Fayetteville, North Carolina, and neither she nor McLean were wearing seat belts.
Suddenly, “the driver ran off the roadway to the left and struck a culvert,” court records state. Goldie Marsh then allegedly jumped from the vehicle and ran away. Troopers responded to the scene, and McLean was pronounced dead.
According to authorities, Goldie Marsh did not call to report the crash and seek help for McLean, but instead, she called her mother to come pick her up. Sharon Marsh allegedly proceeded to do just that and then mislead investigators about who was driving when the wreck occurred.
The crashed car was apparently the elder Marsh’s, and she suggested to WRAL that her daughter, who she said has a history of using drugs, lied to her.
“All she did was call and say she was walking up the road,” the mother, who denies the charges against her, said. “I’m disappointed in her, very disappointed in her. She should have told me the truth when I picked her up that he was down there in the car, wrecked. But she didn’t.”
“I didn’t know he was dead until a state trooper called and told me a dead passenger was in my car. That’s the first I knew about it,” Sharon Marsh added.
Both women were scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday morning.
