LAS VEGAS — Not long ago, the woman accused of crashing her car into pedestrians on the Las Vegas Strip seemed to have turned her life around.
After a rough childhood that included a period of homelessness in high school, Lakeisha Nicole Holloway had become an award-winning high school graduate and caring mother.
The recent picture of success deepens the mystery of how the former Oregon woman wound up in a Las Vegas jail, suspected of killing one person and injuring nearly three dozen others.
Holloway, 24, was expected to be charged this week with murder and other counts after she plowed her Oldsmobile sedan down a sidewalk packed with tourists Sunday night while her 3-year-old daughter sat in the backseat, authorities said.
Police said video surveillance footage led them to believe Holloway deliberately swerved onto the sidewalk. They say she was homeless and out of money, sleeping in her car in parking garages. She might have been on her way to Texas to find the father of her daughter; the pair had split up some time ago.
After her arrest Sunday, Holloway “described a stressful period today where she was trying to rest/sleep inside her vehicle with her daughter but kept getting run off by security of the properties she stopped at,” a police report said.
“She ended up on the Strip, ‘a place she did not want to be,’” the report quoted her as saying. “She would not explain why she drove onto the sidewalk but remembered a body bouncing off her windshield, breaking it.”
She parked at a casino a few blocks from the Strip, told a parking attendant that she had run down people and asked the valet to call 911, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said. Her daughter wasn’t hurt.
Holloway was stoic when police arrived, showed no resistance and spoke coherently about what happened, the sheriff said.
Authorities declined to comment on a potential motive and said they were struggling to piece together her background. Holloway had changed her name in October to Paris Paradise Morton, according to Oregon court records.
Several years ago, Holloway, a graduate of an alternative high school, received an award for overcoming adversity from the nonprofit Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center, which helps at-risk youths with education and job training.
The center did not respond to messages seeking comment, but a statement on its blog said officials were “shocked and deeply saddened.” It said Holloway participated in the center’s work programs but had not been involved with the nonprofit for at least two years.
In 2012, she told The Skanner, a newspaper that covers Portland’s African-American community, that she was homeless during her freshman year in high school.
Court records show she was charged in Oregon in 2011 with operating a vehicle without driving privileges and driving uninsured. She was convicted in March 2012.
Holloway’s cousin, Lashay Hardaway, told The Oregonian newspaper that Holloway worked hard to provide for her daughter.
“She’s just always thinking about her daughter or the next thing she needs to take care of,” Hardaway said, adding that her cousin “makes good money.”
The crash happened in front of the Paris and Planet Hollywood casino-hotels and across from the Bellagio’s famed water fountains. The Miss Universe pageant was being held at Planet Hollywood at the time.
People jumped on the car and banged on its windows, but Holloway didn’t stop driving on the sidewalk, Lombardo said. The car was fully on the walkway twice, including once when it traveled 200 feet, police said.
A drug recognition expert at the scene determined that she was under the influence of some sort of stimulant, Lombardo said.
Holloway was jailed without bail ahead of an initial court appearance Wednesday. Prosecutors plan to charge her with murder with a deadly weapon, hit-and-run and child abuse.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said prosecutors were considering “a great number” of additional charges.
Holloway was under suicide watch, which raises questions about her mental state, said Scott Coffee, a deputy Clark County public defender appointed to represent her. Child welfare officials were caring for the woman’s daughter, a county spokesman said.
Of at least 35 victims taken to hospitals, three were in critical condition with head injuries, officials said.
The crash killed Jessica Valenzuela, 32, of Buckeye, Arizona, who was visiting Las Vegas with her husband, the Clark County coroner said.
Other victims were from Oregon, Florida, Colorado, California, Washington, Mexico and Quebec. Five Canadian citizens, four Oregon college wrestlers and five Pennsylvania wrestlers and their coach in town for a tournament were among the injured.
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Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego, Gosia Wozniacka and Steven DuBois in Portland, Oregon, and Kimberly Pierceall in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
