Man Pleads Guilty To Hitting, Killing Woman On Route 35 In Brick

TOMS RIVER, NJ — A South Amboy man has pleaded guilty in a hit-and-run that killed a woman walking along Route 35 in Brick Township in January 2024, the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office said.

Mark Carey Jr., 21, pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of knowingly leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident resulting in the death of another before Superior Court Judge Kimarie Rahill in the Jan. 13, 2024, crash that killed Julia Sutton of Weehawken, Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer said.

Prosecutors are seeking a six-year prison term when Carey is sentenced, which is scheduled for June 13, the prosecutor's office said.

Brick Township police were called at 9:15 a.m. on Jan. 13, 2024 to Route 35 south at Bay Avenue for a report of a hit-and-run and found Sutton, 56, unresponsive and lying in the shoulder of the road, authorities said. She was taken to Ocean University Medical Center in Brick where she was pronounced dead, authorities said.

Sutton, a health and wellness entrepreneur who had co-founded Exhale, a wellbeing brand based in New York, according to her biography on the Boutique Fitness Solutions website, which offers mentorship for people starting out. She was the chief growth officer for Vitruvia. She completed the OPM program at Harvard Business School and was a member of the COO network, American College of Sports Medicine and HBS Club of New York. She was serving on the Manhattan College O’Malley School of Business Advisory Board. She also was married and had four children, according to her obituary.

Authorities determined she was in the shoulder of the road when she was hit by a 1999 Ford Explorer registered to Carey. The investigation found Carey was driving it at the time Sutton was hit, the prosecutor's office said.

Carey was arrested Jan. 14, 2024, at home in South Amboy and taken to the Ocean County Jail but later released as a consequence of New Jersey Bail Reform, the prosecutor's office said.

The prosecutor’s office Major Crime Unit-Vehicular Homicide Squad and the police departments of Brick Township, Bay Head, Mantoloking, Lavallette, Seaside Heights, Seaside Park, Point Pleasant Beach, Lacey Township, Toms River and South Amboy, along with the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene Investigation Unit and Ocean County Vehicle Services Department combined in the investigation.