A Villager convicted of hitting two bicyclists with her Mercedes and leaving them crumpled on the roadway will serve out her sentence at a women’s prison in Ocala.
Marilyn Hamilton, 91, has been set to the Lowell Correctional Center Annex, a minimum security facility with the capacity to house 1,400 women.
Her release date is Dec. 14, 2027.
The women’s facility offers chaplain services, religious education and worship services. It also offers academic programs as well as a brick-and-block masonry vocational program.
Initially, Hamilton went to the the Florida Department of Correction’s Women’s Reception Center, also in Ocala.
Hamilton was behind the wheel of a white Mercedes on Oct. 30, 2020, when she struck Village of Dunedin residents Jessica Laube and Robert Hunter while they were pedaling on Morse Boulevard near Bonita Boulevard.
Witnesses told the Florida Highway Patrol that Hamilton got out of her vehicle, saw the husband and wife injured and lying on the road, got back into her car and drove away. The vehicle was later recovered at the Mercedes dealership in Gainesville, where it was being repaired.
While delivering Hamilton’s five-year prison sentence in December in Sumter County Court, Judge Don Briggs emphasized that Hamilton’s biggest legal problem wasn’t the crash itself, but the fact she left the scene.