LOWER MANHATTAN — The woman who drove her car onto a crowded sidewalk just steps from an elementary school last year, hitting one woman before speeding off will head to prison for two to six years, authorities said.
Tiffany Murdaugh, 35, pleaded guilty in Manhattan Supreme Court Wednesday to charges of assault and reckless endangerment, more than a year after she jumped the sidewalk on narrow Beekman Street, several feet from the Spruce Street School.
Murdaugh will spend two to six years behind bars, as part of plea deal with prosecutors. She's slated to be sentenced on Aug. 3, the Manhattan DA's office said.
The Philadelphia woman turned herself in on May 19, 2015, after police found her through video surveillance footage of the crash.
Murdaugh's white Dodge Challenger smashed into a woman, 37-year-old Heather Hensl, at about 8 a.m., on April 14, 2015, in a collision that threw her into the air, fracturing her knee and slicing her face.
The car also sent parents and children on their way to the public elementary school running for their lives.
“All of a sudden [the driver] accelerated towards us,” Spruce Street parent, Stacy Cohen, told DNAinfo New York after the April 2015 crash, which happened while she walked her 7-year-old to school with her newborn baby.
“I flung the stroller out of the way and yelled at my son to move. The woman who got hit, she had just passed us.”
It took more than a month for police to press charges against Murdaugh, who initially told police that she was "very tired" and "blacked out" and did not remember the crash, adding that she had also "smoked some marijuana, it must have been laced with something, but I was very high."
Murdaugh, a concrete worker in Philadelphia, said she had been up all night working, and was driving a friend home to Brooklyn from Philadelphia.
She also crashed into a parked car in Brooklyn after the hit-and-run, authorities said.
Murdaugh's Legal Aid lawyer did not return request for comment.
Hensl, the woman injured in the crash, did not immediately return request for comment.
The busy, one-lane westbound street, which leads to the Brooklyn Bridge up ramp, has long been a concern for parents and teachers. The block is often crowded with construction barriers, delivery trucks, and rush-hour drivers.
Four years ago, a UPS worker was killed by an SUV that jumped the curb on Beekman Street. Since then, in response to community pressure, the Department of Transportation placed a traffic light on the corner of Beekman and William streets, as well as street markings to help slow traffic.
But it wasn't until March of 2016 that the school was given a long sought after crossing guard.
Hensl, the woman injured in the crash, did not immediately return request for comment.
