A vehicular homicide case that started with a fatal traffic crash at Oak Ridge Turnpike and Jefferson Avenue in May 2016 ended when the defendant, Vickie Gay Gilmore, died in 2018. A memorial to Christy Duncan, the woman who died in the three-vehicle crash, was set up on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 8, 2016. (File photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
A vehicular homicide case that started with a fatal traffic crash in Oak Ridge ended when the defendant died.
The case against Vickie Gay Gilmore, 64, had been pending in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton. In July, another evaluation was ordered at the Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute in Chattanooga. Gilmore was to be evaluated for her competency to stand trial and her mental condition at the time of the crime (the insanity defense). She had been found to be capable of adequately helping in her defense in an earlier evaluation at Moccasin Bend in 2016, but a later evaluation by a doctor produced contrary findings, according to an April 2018 order for a new competency evaluation.
The new evaluation order in July was stayed, or delayed, in September because of Gilmore’s deteriorating health and her inability to travel.
The charges against her were dismissed in a judgement dated October 9 and filed in November.
“The state having learned that defendant has died, it is ordered that this case is abated by death,” the judgement said.
The four pending charges had been vehicular homicide by recklessness, reckless aggravated assault, reckless endangerment when a deadly weapon is involved, and duty upon striking fixtures on a highway.
Gilmore had been accused of killing Christy Duncan, 37, a Harriman mother and Roane County Schools employee in a three-vehicle crash at Oak Ridge Turnpike and Jefferson Avenue in May 2016.
The vehicular homicide charge alleged Gilmore was driving recklessly at the time of the crash, and the reckless aggravated assault was for allegedly injuring Duncan’s daughter Janna, who was four years old at the time.
Charges against Gilmore were bound over, or sent to, the grand jury for its consideration during an October 2016 preliminary hearing in Anderson County General Sessions Court in Oak Ridge. Gilmore was indicted in April 2017. The indictment moved the case to Anderson County Criminal Court.
Gilmore had been out on bond since May 9, 2016, according to Anderson County jail records.
Duncan was an employee at Roane County Schools, where she was a school social worker and worked with the student support team. She was born in Oak Ridge in 1978, and she graduated from Oliver Springs High School in 1996. She studied social work at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and received her bachelor’s degree in social work in 2002. She received her master’s degree from LMU in 2015. She attended Ridge Church in Oak Ridge, where she worked in the children’s ministry.
Oak Ridge Today was not able to immediately find an obituary for Gilmore on Friday.
See previous story here.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
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