ADRIAN — Within a few weeks of the hit-and-run crash last summer that seriously injured local teenager Dakota Courington, Felisha Racine Madison had already emerged as a possible suspect.
But police encountered numerous obstacles in the investigation, including secondhand statements that could not be traced back to the original source and a witness who died before police learned that Madison had allegedly confessed to him.
Documents filed in Lenawee County District Court detail numerous interviews conducted by police over the course of a year as they worked to build a strong enough case to bring charges against Madison. The court filings also contain accounts of her trying to redirect suspicion onto others and making threats against a person she had allegedly confessed to.
Madison was arraigned on Aug. 20 on a charge of failure to stop at the scene of an accident resulting in significant impairment.
In the two weeks following the accident, according to court documents, police received tips from multiple people who said they had heard from others that Madison had struck Dakota and was hiding her car. They ran into dead ends when trying to trace the statements to their original source.
They were, however, able to access Verizon cell phone records that showed Madison’s phone was in Adrian at the time of the crash, which happened around noon on Aug. 9. Police say that when they questioned Madison, she said she was in the area that afternoon and had driven to a home on Church Street to pick up her grandchildren because her son and his girlfriend had a wedding to attend at 2 p.m. However, her son told police he was at work that afternoon, and his girlfriend stated that the wedding was actually the following day.
Eventually, a firsthand account of a confession came from a man who had had a dating relationship with Madison. Police say this man told them about a conversation he had with her on Jan. 27 of this year, during which Madison — who he said was smoking crack and marijuana and drinking — began talking about her “regrets.” The man said she told him that one of her regrets was “hitting that boy,” and that she hadn’t known what to do when it happened so she “just took off.”
After describing this conversation to police, the man reportedly told Madison about his conversation with the detective. He later showed the detective screenshots of his text message conversation with her. In that conversation, she allegedly threatened to kill the man, and also said she would tell police that he had molested a little girl.
In a subsequent interview, police say, Madison admitted to the conversation but denied telling the man that she had struck Dakota.
She also requested that police investigate another person, a man who she said had a Chevrolet Cruze with front-end damage parked at his house. That man described being told by a third person that Madison had shown up at his house upset because she had “hit some kid on a bicycle.” However, police were unable to verify this report because that person had died in April of this year.
Another witness told police that he confronted Madison about whether or not she had struck Dakota and she attempted to blame her brother and his girlfriend — first by saying they had been driving her car, and then, several months later, making a contradictory claim that they had struck Dakota while driving the girlfriend’s car.
A probable cause conference is scheduled for Aug. 27 in front of Judge Laura Schaedler.
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