The woman driving the car that began a four-car crash that killed three people on Interstate 95 Thursday afternoon was considered a fugitive after having failed to make a court appearance last November.
Stephanie T. Morton, 46, of Richmond, was charged with a variety of offenses, mostly traffic-related, in July and August 2019 in Richmond and Chesterfield County, court documents say. The charges included driving on a suspended or revoked license, disregarding a traffic signal and falsely identifying herself to a law enforcement officer.
She was put in the fugitive file in Chesterfield County on Dec. 17, 2019, and in Richmond on Jan. 7, 2020, the documents say.
Morton was one of the three people killed in the crash on I-95 in Dale City, Virginia, on Thursday. The state police said she was driving northbound at speeds of up to 80 mph when they tried to pull her over.
She sped away, the police said, eventually crashing through three Express Lanes gates that were restricting traffic in those lanes to southbound-only. She crashed into a pickup truck head-on, then into two other cars, causing Morton’s Dodge to catch fire, at about 4:30 p.m.
Morton; her passenger, Tia Porter, 26, of Richmond; and Kenneth Crosby Jr., 61, of Dumfries, all died at the scene. Several other people suffered minor injuries, and the road was closed for about seven hours.
