By PATRICK WHITTLE and MARINA VILLENEUVE
SANFORD, Maine (AP) — A Vietnam War veteran who confessed decades after the fact to killing a 4-year-old girl in a hit-and-run was struck and killed by a car that drove onto a baseball field during a Little League game.
Douglas Parkhurst, 68, of West Newfield, Maine, was trying to herd children out of the path of the car when he was hit Friday night at Goodall Park, in Sanford, Maine.
Screaming bystanders and young ballplayers fled after Carol Sharrow, 51, of Sanford, drove through an open gate onto the field, police said. Video shows the car driving around the infield, turning over home plate and then heading toward the stands behind third base.
Parkhurst, who a coach said was the grandfather of one of the players, died on the way to the hospital. No one else was hurt.
Sharrow was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
“It was awful,” said Sanford resident Karyn Bean, who said she saw Parkhurst being struck. “A car driving through the gate hitting a man who was pushing kids out of the way, then her driving up the road easily doing 50 to 60 miles per hour past us.
“It felt awful because we couldn’t do anything.”
Tim Curley, a coach, said he was standing in the third-base dugout as he heard squealing tires and watched a car crash through the gate after its driver yelled, “Open the gates!” Curley later recognized that the driver was Sharrow, who worked as his grandmother’s caretaker 12 years ago.
“I felt kind of helpless because at that point the only thing I knew was I cared about the safety of the kids on the ball field,” Curley said.
Curley’s son and his teammates scattered, running toward the stands. One boy in center field stood frozen, but escaped unscathed.
Sharrow was scheduled to appear in court later Monday to face a manslaughter charge. She was to have an attorney appointed to represent her then.
Sharrow has two previous drunken-driving convictions in Maine and New Hampshire, according to Sanford police Det. Sgt. Matthew Jones. Authorities have declined to say whether alcohol was involved on Friday.
Parkhurst was 18 when he killed Carolee Ashby on Halloween night in 1968 as she crossed a street in Fulton, New York, hand-in-hand with her 15-year-old sister. He was never charged or even arrested. The statute of limitations had long run out when Parkhurst walked into a police station in 2013 and confessed after two interviews with investigators.
In his four-page confession obtained by the Syracuse Post-Standard during its reporting about the case, Parkhurst said he and his brother had been drinking before he hit the girl.
“While I drove through the city of Fulton, I heard a thud,” Parkhurst wrote in his confession, in which he estimated he had around three beers. “It sounded like I hit a dog.”
Parkhurst said he didn’t see what he hit, and did not stop.
“I don’t remember seeing any kids but I believe in my heart I hit the little Ashby girl with my car,” he wrote.
Police received a tip about Parkhurst and went to interview the teen about the accident. Parkhurst told them that he had hit a guard post that night. He later admitted that was a lie.
“That did not happen, but I don’t know why the police never challenged me on this,” he wrote. “I wish they did and I would have told them the truth.”
Though police were skeptical of his story, they did not follow up. Parkhurst went off to Vietnam, and the case was forgotten when he returned.
In 2012, a former Fulton police officer wrote a Facebook post about the case that prompted a woman then living in Florida to provide new evidence pointing to Parkhurst. After being told he could not be charged because too much time had elapsed, Parkhurst confessed.
Sanford schools offered counseling to students Monday. Curley said the community plans to hold an event for the young ballplayers later this week.
“I personally think the best thing for these boys is to get back on the ball field,” he said.
