A Colorado woman will spend the next several years in prison after she was convicted for hitting an elderly man with her car while high.
Amy Dalton was sentenced on Tuesday, November 3, to four years in prison after she was found guilty of vehicular homicide while under the influence of a substance.
After she learned her sentence, Dalton, 38, addressed the court regarding her crime. “I will carry the weight of this tragedy with me for the rest of my life. I accept full responsibility … I do not expect forgiveness, but I can ask,” she said, according to The Gazette.
She also shared a message with her son before she was taken into custody. “I love you. I promise that I will be back, OK?” she reportedly said.
Dalton admitted she smoked marijuana and took other drugs before she hit Robert “Bob” Selle with her 2016 Subaru Outback while he was mowing his front lawn on August 24, 2025.
Police said that the victim’s wife, Donna Selle, ran outside of her home and was “talking with” Robert, 79, just moments before he died.
“She was watching him through the front window of their house when she observed a silver car, that appeared to be going too fast, become airborne, [and] hit her husband, sending him flying off the lawn mower,” police reported in the arrest affidavit viewed by Us.
A neighbor’s security camera captured the crash, which showed Dalton’s vehicle flying off the road and hitting Robert as he mowed his lawn.
“Dalton’s Subaru became airborne over the driveway,” the affidavit said. “As the Subaru landed, it collided with a barbed wire fence and then traveled into the yard/field … where it (Subaru) collided with Robert Selle, who was operating a riding lawn mower.”
After Robert was struck, “the Subaru continued overturning in the field, coming to rest on its roof.” Authorities said that Robert “was knocked from the lawn mower and came to rest on the ground near the Subaru.”
Robert was initially responsive “and talking with his wife” after the crash, but he later became unconscious and died at the scene.
“For no obvious reason at the time, Dalton failed to maintain control of the Subaru and the vehicle drifted off the right/west side of the roadway,” the affidavit stated. “After analyzing the Subaru’s ACM [airbag control module] data, it’s clear that Dalton never applied the brakes or applied any evasive steering input in the seconds leading up to the crash.”
Dalton spoke to officers after the crash, who noted there was “a strong odor of marijuana coming from her.” She then admitted that she “consumes marijuana daily” and takes “multiple medications,” as well as shared that she “had recently tried methamphetamine for the first time.”
Authorities said that Dalton appeared “mellow” and was “not very responsive” to EMS questions or treatment, and one trooper reported that her eyelids “seemed very heavy.”
After claiming that the crash was caused by her car’s “two bad tires,” Dalton agreed to a voluntary drug test. Authorities then confirmed that two substances were detected in her system, which police believe contributed to her crash.
