ERIE COUNTY COURT

Bond set for woman in double hit-run

Andrea L. Glinski, who is being held in the Amherst hit-and-run accident that seriously injured two women, is expected to be released from jail today, her attorneys said.

Glinski, 30, of the Town of Tonawanda, is charged in the crash that seriously injured Amy E. Stewart, 22, a University at Buffalo graduate student from Grand Island, and Rachel E. Baird, 21, a Daemen College senior from East Syracuse, at about 1:40 a. m. March 7 on Main Street near Campus Drive. She has been charged with felony crimes of leaving the scene of a serious-injury accident and failing to use due care toward a pedestrian.

Erie County Judge Sheila A. Di- Tullio refused Monday to alter the $100,000 cash bail or $250,000 insurance bond set Friday by Amherst Town Justice Mark G. Farrell. Paul J. Cambria and Daniel M. Killelea, the attorneys representing Glinski, said they opted for the insurance bond amid continuing resistance from prosecutors.

Stewart remains in a coma in the Erie County Medical Center’s trauma intensive-care unit, and Baird also is hospitalized in the medical center. The women were struck by a westbound vehicle as they crossed Main Street, according to Amherst police reports.

Cambria and Killelea unsuccessfully urged DiTullio to alter bail terms to allow property bail to secure Glinski’s release from custody. The judge refused, noting that Glinski admitted to Amherst police “she knew that she had hit at least one” person but drove off anyway, allegedly at the urging of a passenger in her vehicle. That, the judge said, “demonstrates to me that she is a flight risk.”

Cambria insisted that he and Killelea were not asking for Glinski to be released without bail; they wanted her family be spared the expense of a $17,000 to $20,000 bill for obtaining a $250,000 insurance bail bond.

Niagara Falls attorney Joseph Carosella, a longtime Glinski family friend who was in the Buffalo courtroom Monday, offered to post one of his $400,000 to $500,000 real estate properties as bail to obtain Glinski’s release.

Kelley A. Omel, chief of the Erie County district attorney’s Vehicular Crimes Unit, stressed that the office has sought “high bail” in all recent cases involving traffic fatalities.