Woman Cleared In Auto Crash Death

When ambulance crews rolled up on the aftermath of a violent car wreck nearly three years ago, they found taxi driver John Kelly dead, his body partially ejected from his cab.

In the other car, a Ford Taurus, they found Leyana M. Rich, then 18, behind the wheel. Rich was charged with vehicular homicide because the Taurus was fleeing from police and had run a stop sign before it smashed into Kelly's cab, court documents say.

Now, after Rich spent two years in jail awaiting trial, prosecutors say she wasn't driving after all.

Last month, the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office dropped the vehicular homicide charge against Rich. Now, prosecutors are charging the boyfriend, Luke Irons, who was also 18 at the time of the Feb. 2, 2006, wreck, but who was nowhere to be found when paramedics arrived.

Irons now admits he was the driver, according to court documents and prosecutors. Irons' admission came after he was sentenced to 30 years in prison last year after a string of crimes in Hendry County.

"We were operating under the premise she was the driver," said Chief Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett. "Once our expert was of the opinion she was not driving and he was - and now you had the guy confessing - it put us in the position where we couldn't go forward with it against her."

Before the wreck, Irons and Rich had been at a drug house, someone tried to rob them and they took off in the Taurus, court documents say. A police officer spotted the car and tried to pull it over, the documents say. The officer said he saw Rich behind the wheel.

That officer's observation, coupled with Rich being found behind the wheel after the 1:51 a.m. collision, led to the vehicular homicide charge.

Rich was in the Pinellas County Jail for two years before she posted $20,000 bond, according to bail records. The charges were dropped Dec. 19.

After Rich claimed she wasn't the driver, her attorney, Geoffrey Cox, had DNA tests performed on several items in the car. The results showed there was blood on the airbag on the driver's side, but it was Irons, not hers.

Prosecutors have filled out the paperwork for an arrest warrant charging Irons with vehicular homicide, leaving the scene of an accident involving death. The maximum sentence is 30 years.