LINCOLN, Maine — A local woman will pay a $750 fine after pleading no contest Tuesday to charges arising from a hit-and-run on West Broadway in January, in which a pedestrian was struck, officials said.
Brittany Goding, 31, of Lincoln entered the plea on a charge of failure to report an accident. As part of the plea bargain, Lincoln District Court Judge Kevin Stitham dismissed a charge of leaving the scene of an accident involving personal injury, a court clerk said.
By pleading no contest, Goding did not admit guilt but indicated that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict her and that she was not disputing this point.
Goding voluntarily came to the Lincoln Public Safety building Jan. 25 after police appealed for the public’s help that day in identifying the vehicle that struck a 19-year-old pedestrian. The man was walking southeast from the Bank of Maine on West Broadway toward Penobscot Valley Hospital on Jan. 23 when the hit-and-run occurred, around 9:50 p.m., according to Detective Mark Fucile, spokesman for the Lincoln Police Department.
Goding told police she was driving home in her 2002 Saturn sedan after working a double shift as a waitress at a West Broadway restaurant when she saw the man alongside the road, Fucile has said. She claimed she pulled away from the man but heard a loud noise, like he had thrown a rock at her vehicle or she had a flat tire.
The injured man reported suffering back and hip pain and a possible spinal injury from the crash, Fucile has said. No information was available on the man’s present condition.
Darkness at that hour of night prevented the man from identifying the vehicle that struck him when he was about 100 feet from the bank. Investigators found at the scene a passenger-side rear-view mirror typically found on 1997 to 2002 Saturn sedans that came off Goding’s car when the collision occurred, Fucile has said.
Goding, meanwhile, reported she didn’t notice any damage to her vehicle when she arrived home. It dawned on her that she may have hit a pedestrian when her boyfriend told her Sunday that rumor had it that a hit-and-run occurred on Penobscot Valley Road around the time she was there, Fucile said.
Stitham also ordered that Goding’s driver’s license be suspended for three months and that she pay restitution to the insurance companies involved in exchange for the no-contest plea, a court official said.
Goding cooperated with investigators, Fucile has said.