Trial postponed for woman accused of killing her child in OWI crash
Her 5 other kids were injured in the collision
Trial is postponed in Oakland County for the case against an Inkster woman accused in a wrong-way drunk driving crash that killed one of her six children in Farmington Hills.
Shelby Symone Ellis, 30, is charged with one count of operating while intoxicated causing death and one count of child endangerment for a traffic crash that happened at the intersection of Eight Mile and Inkster roads at around 2:30 a.m. Aug. 27, 2022. According to investigators, her blood alcohol content was .26 percent — nearly three times the legal limit — when measured by a preliminary breath test administered soon after the crash.
Her trial had been scheduled to begin Dec. 4 in the courtroom of Oakland County Circuit Judge Jeffery Matis. A new start date is needed because a civil trial before Matis hadn’t been resolved yet. As of Monday afternoon, the new trial date was pending.
Ellis was driving with her children, ages 10, 7, 5, 3, 18 months and 8 months old at the time, when the crash occurred, and the 3-year-old was killed. The child wasn’t in a child seat and wasn’t seatbelted in, police said.
Police said Ellis was driving northbound in the southbound lane of Inkster Road when she collided with a vehicle driven by a 33-year-old Detroit man traveling westbound on Eight Mile Road. Ellis and her surviving children, as well as the other driver, were injured in the crash.
As stated earlier in court, Ellis had no prior criminal history prior to the crash, was employed with a cleaning service at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and was attending community college. She’s been out of custody on a personal bond — requiring no cash or surety to be posted — since late August 2022.