Woman arrested with help of license plate reader
A Berks County woman was arrested Monday on a hit-and-run charge, four months after she fled the scene of a minor accident in a Reading parking lot and ignored a police officer’s letter, authorities said Tuesday.
Krista Leaf, 50, backed her SUV into a car in the lot in the 1100 block of Lancaster Avenue on April 7 about 6 p.m., police said.
The other driver said the SUV driver got out, looked at the damage, then returned to her vehicle and drove off, according to the criminal complaint. The driver described the SUV driver as a white woman in her 40s filed the charge and requested an arrest warrant.
Online records indicate several attempts to deliver certified summonses to Leaf were unsuccessful.
On Monday, a Cumru police officer stopped Leaf in her vehicle after the license plate reader mounted to the roof of the patrol vehicle sounded an alarm indicating there was an active arrest warrant for the owner of the vehicle.
Cumru Township is one of a few police departments in Berks County that have recently purchased the special cameras that randomly scan license plates and match them against a state database. The plate readers are useful for determining if vehicle inspections are expired because PennDOT went to stickerless vehicle registration and for flagging wanted people, police chiefs have said.
Leaf remained free to await a hearing following arraignment Monday night before Senior District Judge Thomas M. Gauby Sr. in Reading Central Court.