A man who was visiting his parents in The Villages and left a woman to die after she fell from their golf cart will not spend any time behind bars.
Timothy Jacob Foxworth, 38, on Monday morning in Sumter County Court pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges in connection with the July 16, 2017 incident which claimed the life of 51-year-old Shelly Osterhout.
Foxworth said little as he stood before Judge William H. Hallman III, who sentenced the North Carolina man to one year of probation and 50 hours of community service.
“It stinks,” Osterhout’s eldest son, Jacob, said after the hearing.
The 28-year-old from Tampa sat near the front of the courtroom with his mother’s mother and sister.
“My mother raised three sons to be strong men. He is weak,” Jacob Osterhout said of Foxworth.
Foxworth was accompanied to court by his father, Roger Foxworth, who sold his Village of Gilchrist home and moved to North Carolina after his son’s arrest.
Father and son had been drinking together at City Fire at Brownwood on that fateful night in 2017 when the younger Foxworth met Osterhout, who was visiting The Villages from Fort Myers. They left together in his parents’ golf cart from which she fell, suffering the fatal head injury. Foxworth told police he “panicked,” dragged her body into a flower bed and drove away. She was discovered by Good Samaritans who called for an ambulance. She later died at Ocala Regional Medical Center.
Foxworth offered no words of remorse as he stood before the judge. Foxworth was accompanied by his attorney Andrew Moses, who skillfully and methodically over the past several months negotiated the charges down from DUI manslaughter and hit-and-run felonies to misdemeanor charges of culpable negligence and DUI impairment. Moses relied on case law that dictated his client could not be charged with leaving the scene of an accident because there was no crash – Osterhout fell from the golf cart when Foxworth discovered he was traveling in the wrong direction and cut a sharp U-turn.
Assistant State Attorney William James Catto admitted that because of this detail, the state could not prove a case against Foxworth.
“There is no Good Samaritan law in the state of Florida. He wouldn’t be required to help her,” Catto told Judge Hallman. “I feel badly for the family.”
Osterhout’s father, Richard Chapman, had submitted a written victim impact statement to the court. Judge Hallman read it silently.
“I read this and I know the pain. It is a horrible situation,” Hallman said after he put down the document, which is sealed in the court file.
“Part of this is the folks in Tallahassee made a law and we have to follow the law,” Hallman added.
Chapman, like Foxworth’s parents, has also moved out of The Villages.
There was an indication that Foxworth will be required to make restitution to Osterhout’s family, but no amount was discussed at Monday’s hearing.
In October 2017, Foxworth announced on his personal Facebook page, he was “self employed” working for Golden Considerations Inc., a funeral planning business.
