Hannah Morse
Palm Beach Post
PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — A 23-year-old North Lauderdale woman who told medics she was Harry Potter has been charged in a hit-and-run crash that left a New York federal judge dead and seriously injured a 6-year-old boy, police said.
Nastasia Snape was driving a red two-door sedan “erratically” near the intersection of North Ocean Boulevard just north of Spanish River Park on Friday morning when she went around stopped traffic and onto the sidewalk, hitting 75-year-old Judge Sandra Feuerstein of Long Island, Boca Police said.
Feuerstein was transported to Delray Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
Snape also hit the 6-year-old boy, who was walking in the crosswalk on Ocean Boulevard toward the beach.
Snape did not stop after the crash, leaving the scene only to crash again five miles north in Delray Beach, at the intersection of Southeast 10th Street and Southeast Sixth Avenue. Police who responded to the second crash initially thought Snape was unconscious, but then saw her “begin to convulse or have seizure-like movements,” the police report said.
Snape didn’t make eye contact with the police officers and was described as not “moving around as the typical person would be who had just been involved in a crash.”
When Snape was placed in an ambulance, she “began to scream and fight with medics stating that she was ‘Harry Potter,’” the police report said, referring to the fictional wizard book series by J.K. Rowling. A prominent character in the books is named Snape.
An officer interviewing Snape said that she remembered being in a crash, but when asked when the crash happened, she said “I wasn’t in a crash.”
When officials looked for Snape’s ID at the emergency room, they found small containers labeled “THC cannabis” and a synthetic drug called T salts, “commonly known to cause erratic excited delirium-like behavior,” the police report said.
Snape was charged with leaving the scene of a crash involving injury, leaving the scene of a crash involving death and vehicular homicide, each count carrying a $20,000 bond. She was ordered to surrender her passport and was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail early Saturday morning.
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