Teen drove 93 mph before fatal crash

A teenage girl was driving 93 mph when she lost control of her Ford Focus and struck a tree last month, fatally injuring her Bloom-Carroll High School classmate, court records show.

The driver, Katie N. Jumper, 16, of Greenfield Township in Fairfield County, is charged with delinquency counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, reckless operation, speed and failure to control in Fairfield County Juvenile Court, according to the State Highway Patrol. All of the charges are misdemeanors.

Leah Jackson, 15, a sophomore and varsity cheerleader at Bloom-Carroll High School whose parents own a home close to the Jumper family as well as another elsewhere in Greenfield Township, was critically injured in the crash on Plum Road in Greenfield Township. She was flown by medical helicopter to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, where she died hours later on the morning of March 3.

Jumper was driving on Plum Road with Jackson sitting in the front passenger seat at 11:09 p.m. on March 2 when the accident occurred. Both girls had their safety belts on, the patrol said.

After cresting a hill on Plum Road, which has a 55 mph speed limit, Jumper’s westbound car went left of center, skidded, struck a tree and spun around, the patrol said.

Troopers investigating the crash obtained a search warrant to recover the crash-data recorder from Jumper’s car. The recorder found that the car’s speed was 93 mph five seconds before the crash. After the car’s brakes were engaged and at the time the crash occurred, the speed was 78.2 mph, court and patrol records show.

The Bloom Township Fire Department had to extricate Jackson from the wreckage.

Jumper told the patrol that the only thing she remembered after the crash was crawling out the sunroof and walking to a nearby house to get help. She returned to the scene with her parents, the patrol said. She was taken by Bloom Township medics to Fairfield Medical Center, where she was treated for a concussion and a broken right arm. The patrol determined that she had not consumed alcohol or used drugs.

The patrol did not have details available Tuesday evening about the status of Jumper’s case in Fairfield County Juvenile Court.