A Florida woman has been sentenced to nine years in federal prison for the death of her girlfriend, who police found dead on the side of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in November 2021.
Janice Martina Mason, 30, of Melbourne, Florida, was convicted in May of this year for the 2021 voluntary manslaughter of Sharisse Denise Carr, then 26.
A release stated that “in the heat of passion Mason purposefully drove into the victim and then left her on the highway to die.”
On Nov. 24, 2021, police responded to a report of a body on the side of the BW Parkway northbound near Route 197. Carr was found “lying face down on the shoulder of the road,” and pronounced dead by medics who arrived on the scene.
The release said that evidence showed no skid marks or vehicle parts at the scene, but the victim’s cellphone as well as Mason’s cellphone with a broken screen had been found in the area.
Later testimony showed that Mason contacted the U.S. Park Police’s Greenbelt station on Nov. 24 to advise of a phone she’d tracked back to USPP Criminal Investigations, after losing it on the BW Parkway, saying it had been thrown out of her vehicle.
Mason then agreed to come to the station for an interview, the release said. There, Mason said she was visiting from Florida and staying with her mother in Washington, D.C., according to witness testimony.
The release said Mason told detectives that while driving Carr and another woman home to Laurel, Maryland, the other woman began to hit Mason.
Mason said she pulled over on the highway, ordered the women out of her black Nissan, and saw them walk away. Mason also identified the broken phone found in the roadway as belonging to her.
The following day, on Nov. 25, 2021, a U.S. Park Police detective obtained Mason’s consent to seize and search her phone, as well as tow and examine the Nissan she’d stated had been used to drive Carr and the other woman home, according to the release.
While at Mason’s residence, the detective noticed a black Ford Expedition parked down the street with tags reading ‘JANICE’ and subsequently determined it was the vehicle Mason had been driving on the night in question. When investigators towed the Ford Expedition, it was found to have “visible damage to the hood, front grille, and the passenger side running board,” according to the release.
During a second voluntary interview with USPP investigators, Mason admitted to having driven the Ford Expedition instead of the Nissan and that only she and the victim were in the car that night.
Forensic analysis was then able to determine that DNA swabbed from an indent in the vehicle’s hood matched Carr’s DNA, and that an impression collected from the undercarriage of the truck matched the pattern and size of the victim’s shoe, the release said.
Mason’s nine-year sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, according to the Department of Justice.
