Crime & Safety

Report: Owings Mills Driver Sentenced to Five Years for Driving Drunk, Killing Ellicott City Woman

Howard County courts gave an Owings Mills woman with a history of driving drunk a five-year prison sentence for the death of Ellicott City resident Cecilia Ann Amato.

Alison Lesley Walsh's history of DUIs led to her five-year prison sentence for the death of an Ellicott City woman last year, according to a Columbia Flier report. 

Two similar events in the fall of 2010 yielded 18 months in jail for other offenders, but that's because they did not have previous drunk driving offenses, Howard County Assistant State's Attorney Claude de Vastey Jones told Circuit Court Judge Diane O. Leasure at Walsh's sentencing hearing Thursday, according to the report.

Walsh, now 23, rear-ended a motorcycle at the intersection of Route 40 and Marriottsville Road in Ellicott City on July 11, 2010, killing Cecilia Ann Amato, 68. The original indictment listed Walsh living at an Owings Mills address and in subsequent documents at a Hampstead address.

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Walsh, to negligent vehicular manslaughter in February, had just completed probation for another drunk driving offense about six months before Amato's death.

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