On Oct. 7, officials claim an angry Jennifer Nelson, 35, drove her car into the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts across from William Floyd High School in Mastic Beach and was wielding a knife and small bat when she confronted a group of teenagers, the New York Post reported.
The 15-year-old victim in the case tried to walk away and made his way into a parking lot, but Nelson got back into her vehicle and started following the teen, officials said.
Nelson allegedly slammed into the boy with her vehicle, knocking him to the ground, and then “proceeded to drive over the victim, up onto a curb, reversed, drove over the victim again,” authorities said.
The teenager suffered multiple fractures to his pelvis, six fractured ribs, a punctured lung and “numerous bruises and abrasions,” the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said.
In an alleged attempt to throw cops off her trail, Nelson tried to trade in her leased 2020 Honda Passport the same night, prosecutors said.
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said the mother “thought she could take the law into her own hands to kill a 15-year-old in the process.” He added, “Citizens cannot take the law into their own hands, and should instead work with law enforcement and my office to seek justice in every case.”
Nelson believed the boy had earlier bullied and robbed her son, prosecutors said. Officials, however, pointed out two teenagers were later arrested in connection with the robbery of the student, and the victim she hit was not one of them.
Meanwhile, Nelson’s attorney, Paul D’Emilia, told the New York Post that the D.A.’s version of the incident was “unfortunate and misleading” and claimed prosecutors were trying to “conflate two separate events that day as one continuous occurrence.”
D’Emilia stated Nelson got a “frantic telephone call from her son” that he was “being bullied and physically assaulted in the parking lot” outside of the high school.
When the concerned mother got there, she found her son “shoeless and surrounded by tormentors,” he said.
Nelson claimed she fended off her son’s attackers and then drove to both the junior high school and senior high school to report the incident and try and retrieve her son’s sneakers.
From there, D’Emilia said Nelson hit the teen almost two hours later when she was driving her son home.
The defense lawyer said, “A group of males were running through the streets, and one of the young men received injuries after striking Ms. Nelson’s car. Ms. Nelson did not see nor recognize the young man who was injured.”
Nelson claimed she was “completely taken by surprise” and did not see the teen running toward her car and the victim “ran off after the incident.”
She was arraigned on Feb. 6 and charged with second-degree attempted murder, first-degree assault, first-degree reckless endangerment, and one count of leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in serious physical injury.
