Woman Sentenced to Prison for Fatal Incident During Mother’s Anniversary Trip

A Nevada woman is facing a lengthy prison sentence after a tragic incident on the Las Vegas Strip resulted in the death of a mother of three and injuries to numerous pedestrians. The woman, who drove her car into a crowd, has been sentenced to 18 years behind bars.

“Where”s mommy?” Jessica Valenzuela’s daughter, Layla Valenzuela, asked her father after he returned from the 2015 trip without her. The teen described the emotional moment during Lakeisha Holloway’s sentencing hearing last week, broadcast by local NBC affiliate KSNV.

At the time of the incident, the driver, then 24-year-old Lakeisha Holloway, has since changed her name to Paris Morton. She recently pleaded guilty to charges of second-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon, as well as battery with a deadly weapon, leading to her sentencing.

In a poignant moment during the court proceedings, Layla Valenzuela, only eight years old at the time, recounted asking her father, Axel Valenzuela, “Where’s mommy? I want to see her. Where is she?” Her mother, Jessica Valenzuela, was tragically killed while on an anniversary trip with her husband.

Jessica’s other daughter, Giana Valenzuela, who was nine at the time of her mother’s death, shared her lingering regret in court, expressing sorrow over not having the chance to say goodbye, believing her mother would return from her trip.

“I think about that a lot,” Giana emotionally stated.

Prosecutors revealed that Morton experienced a mental breakdown, which led her to veer off the road and strike 37 pedestrians on the Strip in December 2015. Among those hit was Jessica Valenzuela, who was walking along the sidewalk on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Morton was homeless, out of money, and living in her car with her 3-year-old daughter when the crash happened after traveling to Las Vegas from Oregon, according to prosecutors. She had been staying in parking garages and “kept getting run off by security of the properties,” according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press.

“She ended up on the Strip, ‘a place she did not want to be,’” the report quoted her as saying, according to AP. While Morton could not explain why she drove onto the sidewalk, she remembered bodies “bouncing off her windshield, breaking it.”

Morton’s case reportedly dragged on for years due to mental health evaluations and changes in her legal representation, among other issues. She was found not competent to stand trial in 2020 and then deemed competent in 2021 after undergoing a series of evaluations at a state psychiatric facility before pleading guilty in August 2025.

“Your pain, I have never taken for granted,” Morton said at her sentencing, while sobbing. “And to see you today, finally, that you get to have this moment after 11 years. For 11 years, I never wanted to say the wrong thing. [No matter] how many sorries, and how much remorse, words are never enough. I feel like saying this statement and reading this statement to you is an injustice in itself. I’m so sorry for your pain.”