A McCool man pleaded guilty last week to a charge stemming from the death of Bethany Marie White.
Richard Perry Ford Jr. pleaded guilty Sept. 9 in Attala County Circuit Court to leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death, according to Kosciusko’s Star-Herald.
Circuit Judge George Mitchell Jr., upon recommendation of the district attorney’s office, sentenced Ford to 20 years. Fifteen of those years will be served in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections and another five years on supervised release.
Ford, 51, pleaded guilty in the July 28, 2018, death of 20-year-old White. She was a resident of Louisville but lived in Eupora at one time.
In a March profile of White based upon an interview with her parents, The Star-Herald’s Karen Fioretti wrote she was hired to clean Ford’s home after a friend had reportedly introduced them. White’s parents, according to the article, said Ford was giving her a ride to see a friend in Starkville when the pair stopped at PeeWee’s convenience store on Highway 12 in Weir.
Authorities originally alleged that Ford hit White with his pickup truck in the parking lot after the two ended up in an argument. Ford was arrested the next day but had been out on bail since February.
The plea deal avoided a trial in the case, which initially charged Ford with both negligent manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death. The district attorney’s office dropped the manslaughter charge and allowed Ford to plead only to the leaving the scene charge, the newspaper reported.
Assistant District Attorney Mike Howie told the court that the investigation showed that Ford did not actually hit White with his truck — but he also did not render aid to her following the accident that resulted in her death, as required by law.
In video obtained by the Attala County Sheriff’s Department, Ford and White are shown having an argument outside the convenience store, but the actual accident is not shown. According to Howie, the investigation revealed that White died following a fall from the vehicle, not from being hit by it.
“She tried to get into the vehicle and she fell out of the back of it, hit her head and died,” Howie told the court.
Ford left the scene without doing anything to help the young woman and attempted to hide his involvement in her death, according to investigators.
White figured in one of the indictments brought against former Webster County Sheriff Tim Mitchell. A count charging him with attempted sexual activity between sheriff and inmate alleged Mitchell groped White while she was in custody in the Webster County Jail in April 2018, giving her $200 in expectation that she would meet up with him later, but she refused all communications with him once she was released.
That count was among six dismissed when Mitchell pleaded guilty in June to four other felony charges for which he received a 15-year prison sentence and was forced to resign.
