Yankees-Red Sox argument ends in murder?
BOSTON (Reuters) - A New York Yankees' fan was accused on Monday of murdering a Boston Red Sox supporter and injuring another by running both down with a car after a heated argument over one of America's oldest sporting rivalries.
Ivonne Hernandez, 43, pleaded not guilty on Monday to reckless second-degree murder, aggravated driving while intoxicated and two counts of reckless conduct after the incident in a Nashua, New Hampshire parking lot last Friday.
Prosecutors say Hernandez was drunk when she drove her car across a dirt parking lot outside the Nashua City Hall into Matthew Beaudoin, 29, and Maria Hughes, 21, after exchanging words with them about the Yankees and Red Sox baseball teams.
The spat began at a local bar where Hernandez said she was a Yankees fan, according to witnesses quoted by the Nashua Telegraph newspaper.
It then spilled outside where a group that included Beaudoin chanted "Yankees suck!" when they saw a Yankees sticker on the rear window of Hernandez's car, New Hampshire's Assistant Attorney General, Susan Morrell, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
She told Nashua District Court that Hernandez drove directly at the group and did not brake, hitting Beaudoin.
"The forensic evidence at the scene indicates tire tracks going about 200 feet that did not swerve or brake," Morrell said. "He went onto the windshield and then when the car hit the parking meter he was ejected," she added.
Beaudoin died of massive head trauma, she added.
Hernandez told police she had only wanted to scare the group. She was ordered held without bail.
Hughes suffered minor injuries.
The Red Sox and the New York Yankees have long been one of sport's most colorful and fiercest rivalries.
While Boston won the World Series championship five times in its first two decades, including the 1903 inaugural series, they endured an 86-year dry spell before winning their sixth Series in 2004 and seventh in 2007.
The Yankees, however, have racked up 26 wins over the Series' history, including streaks of three, four and five-in-a-row championships.
(Reporting by Jason Szep, editing by Todd Eastham)
