Indiana Woman Charged 6 Months After Causing Crash That Killed 6-Year-Old Boy

An Indiana woman was high on methamphetamines and was doing her makeup when she caused an accident last November that killed a 6-year-old boy.

Khristal Grant 43, wasn’t charged until May 9 and wasn’t arrested until May 28, WXIN reported.

The accident took place on November 9 in Shelby County. Six-year-old James Doniven Hodges was a passenger in a Ford Explorer driven by his grandparents when Grant’s Chevy Tahoe rammed into the back as they waited to make a left turn. Winesses told police that the Tahoe approached at a high rate of speed and seemed to be “all over the roadway.”

The witnesses, in a vehicle Grant passed moments before the collision, said they saw the driver applying make up while looking into the vehicle’s vanity mirror. She passed them at a speed one witness said made their vehicle appeared to be “standing still.”

Those witnesses saw the collision, which spun the Ford SUV into oncoming traffic, where it was a struck by another vehicle. Grant’s vehicle also struck another vehicle. Several drivers and passengers were taken to area hospitals, but the boy traveling with his grandparents was pronounced dead on the scene.

According to court documents, Grant admitted to using meth and smoking marijuana “with the past few days” but insisted she hadn’t used any drugs that day. She told officers she had been on her way to work and denied that she wasn’t paying attention to driving.

But data from her vehicle showed that she was traveling nearly 70 mph 2.5 seconds before the crash and didn’t touch her brake until a half second before the collision.

A drug test found methamphetamine  greater thatn 50 ng/mL, court document say, and a forensic toxicologist said her driving “was consistent with impairment from methamphetamines.”

Grant faces up to 12 years in prison if she’s convicted on the current charges, operating a motor vehicle with a controlled substance and causing death while operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, according to WTHR. Her trial is set to begin on August 5.