Around New England

Man Who Saved Little Leaguers From Car Was Also Hit-and-Run Driver 50 Years Ago

June 5, 2018

A wildly driven car that entered a Babe Ruth field in Sanford, Maine during a baseball game struck and killed a 68-year-old man who had pushed children out of the way.

“He took the hit for the kids,” a witness told NewsCenterMaine.com.

The victim, Douglas Parkhurst, in 2013 confessed to hitting and killing a 4-year-old girl in Fulton, New York in 1968, when he was 18 years old. He had driven under the influence of alcohol and had been a suspect in the hit-and-run early on, but police at the time let the matter drop.

The driver of the car that killed Pankhurst in Maine on Friday night has a history of drunken driving, though police aren’t saying whether alcohol was a factor in the incident.

Relatives of Darlene Ashby McCann, the little girl who died in 1968, are having none of the hero stuff for Parkhurst, who they say put them through hell by killing Darlene and failing to admit to it or even, after he confessed, to apologize.

Parkhurst was never charged in the 1968 fatality because the statute of limitations had long expired when he finally confessed to it.