The Cobb County mother charged with vehicular homicide for jaywalking when a hit-and-run driver killed her son spent a night in jail over the weekend, authorities said Tuesday.
Raquel Nelson was arrested late Friday morning and charged with eluding police, speeding, driving with improper window tint and having an invalid tag, police said.
Cobb County police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that officers saw Nelson speeding Friday around 11:15 a.m., at the intersection of South Cobb Parkway and Gibbs Street near the Southern Polytechnic State University campus.
She was doing 64 mph in a 45 mph zone, police said.
"She went into the parking lot of Southern Polytechnic to elude police," Pierce said.
The motorcycle officers drove onto the campus and began looking for Nelson's car, police said. Construction workers on campus pointed police in the direction of a black Jeep.
"The officers observed steam pouring out of the vehicle behind the black Jeep," Pierce said. "The driver got out."
Police arrested the 31-year-old Nelson. According to records from the Cobb County Adult Detention Center, the woman was booked into the jail just after 2 p.m. Friday and was released around 1:30 a.m. Saturday on $1,000 bond.
In July 2011, a Cobb County State Court jury found Nelson guilty of homicide by vehicle in the second degree, crossing a roadway elsewhere than at crosswalk and reckless conduct in the April 10, 2010 death of her 4-year-old son A.J. As Nelson crossed Austell Road that evening with her three children, a hit-and-run driver struck her and her two youngest children, A.J. and and Lauryn.
Nelson and Lauryn suffered only minor injuries, but A.J. was killed.
Although the driver, Jerry Lynn Guy, had two prior hit-and-run convictions and pleaded guilty to a third infraction, he was able to negotiate a plea deal that got him six months in jail and five years' probation.
Cobb County State Judge Katherine Tankersley offered Nelson a choice between 12 months of probation or a retrial. Nelson opted for the retrial and has since appealed the judge's denial of a request to drop the charges. The woman is awaiting a ruling from the Georgia Court of Appeals.
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