Although she continues to assert that she didn’t commit a crime, a Cody driver who hit a young bicyclist and left the scene last year has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense.

Jennifer Phillips crashed into an 11-year-old cyclist early on Sept. 21, 2022, near the intersection of Cody’s 16th Street and Stampede Avenue. The boy suffered a broken tibia, broken ribs, a punctured lung and other injuries in the collision, but Phillips kept driving, telling police that she never saw the child and didn’t realize she’d hit anyone.

Cody police and Park County prosecutors, however, contended a reasonable person would have realized they’d been in an accident.

The county attorney’s office charged Phillips with two misdemeanor counts: failing to stop following an accident involving injury and reckless endangering.

Phillips was prepared to fight the charges at a bench trial before Park County Circuit Court Judge Joey Darrah last week, but right before the trial was set to begin, the parties struck a deal that had the support of the boy and his family.

As one part of the deal, Phillips agreed to offer what’s known as an Alford plea to the count of reckless endangering.

It’s treated by the court just like a guilty plea, but it allows Phillips to continue to contend that she is innocent; she admitted only that the state had enough evidence to convict her of the crime. 

Philips’ attorney Tim Blatt, said his client believed it was in her best interest to take the deal, “given the potential risks of trial and the potential outcomes.” For instance, Blatt noted that Phillips could have also been convicted of the hit-and-run charge, which prosecutors agreed to drop.

Blatt also passed along condolences from Phillips to the boy and his family, saying that he’d prevented his client from apologizing while the criminal charges were pending.

The deal calls for Darrah to choose the appropriate sentence for Phillips, but the parties have agreed it must include one year of unsupervised probation with restricted driving conditions. Under the arrangement, Phillips will only be allowed to drive to work, her children’s school events and for necessities like groceries and medical appointments while on probation; those restrictions are similar to the bond conditions she’s been under since September 2022.

Although a trial was averted, the parties previewed some of the arguments they would have made as they moved through the Nov. 29 change of plea hearing.

While Phillips continued to contend she didn’t know she had hit the bicyclist, Deputy Park County Attorney Jack Hatfield argued that, between the grinding noise made by the bike and other factors, “she clearly knew that she had been in an accident and [in] fleeing the scene, left the … 11-year-old boy in the roadway, subject to potentially being hit by any other vehicles ...”

Charging documents quote Philips as saying “she felt her truck rock and heard a ‘bump bump’” while making a right-hand turn onto Stampede Avenue, but thought she’d only hit the curb.

“Jennifer [Phillips] indicated that she often strikes curbs and that this is not unusual for her,” Cody Police Sgt. Seth Horn wrote in an affidavit.

However, Phillips soon heard from her husband that a child had been hit at the intersection and drove back through the area, where she saw multiple police cars, the affidavit says. Still, after talking to her husband and later finding no damage on her vehicle, they felt she was not the person who’d hit the child.

Horn saw things differently. While agreeing it was possible Phillips initially didn’t realize she’d been involved in a crash, the information she’d received from her husband “would have led any reasonable person to believe that there was a high probability they were involved in a collision,” Horn wrote. He said she had a duty to report the accident, “which she made no effort to do.”

The officer’s affidavit also quotes Phillips as saying “if she did strike the child that she believed law enforcement would contact her,” which turned out to be true. Thanks in part to security camera footage, Cody police identified her as the driver and arrested her within a matter of hours. Phillips was released on bond a couple days later.

Last week, Judge Darrah welcomed the resolution offered by the plea deal — particularly with it having been endorsed by the bicyclist and his family.

“I think it’s always a good thing if we can settle cases,” he said.

Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 22.