North Kingstown Woman Pleads to Stealing Car While Infant Slept

WAKEFIELD — A North Kingstown woman was ordered to serve a year of probation and to complete substance abuse counseling after pleading no contest to charges  she stole a friend's mother's car to snort drugs while her infant daughter slept at the friend's house.

Christine Amanda Morrison, 18, formerly of 135 Hoover St., North Kingstown, and now of 6101 Post Road Lot 62, North Kingstown, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of larceny less than $500, which was amended from a felony of driving a motor vehicle without the owner's consent.

Superior Court Associate Justice Edwin Gale ordered Morrison to serve a year of probation, to complete substance abuse counseling and 50 hours of community service, to pay $90 in assessments, and to pay restitution to the victim, a 49-year-old woman on Mt. View Avenue.

According to North Kingstown police reports included in court documents, on Sept. 8 about 9 a.m., police were called to the Mt. View Avenue home.

A friend of Morrison's said she woke up at 2 a.m. to find her mother's car and Morrison missing. About five minutes later, Morrison was back at the house, and said the right rear wheel of the car had been damaged when she hit a pothole.

The friend told police that Morrison had not told them she was borrowing the car, and that she left her infant at the home with her friend. She added that after Morrison came back with the car, she appeared to be under the influence of drugs and immediately went to bed for several hours, and refused to be woken up.

When police interviewed Morrison later that morning, she told them she went to a friend's house on Kingswood Road and snorted three Klonopin pills.

All information is compiled from records at Fourth Division District Court and Washington County Superior Court.