Cops: Florida woman charged with assault after hitting woman with car during fight outside Riverhead hotel

See follow up story: Both women in fight outside Riverhead hotel were charged with prostitution at upstate hotel one week ago: report

A fight between two women in the parking lot of a Riverhead hotel led to one being arrested and the other being airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital with serious injuries, according to Riverhead Town Police.

Police said Jaqulynn Vaughn, 26, of Tampa, Florida, assaulted Rita Rios, 22, of Evanston, Illinois, with her vehicle in the parking lot of the Hotel Indigo yesterday afternoon.

Riverhead police were called to the scene at 1:57 p.m. to investigate a report of a pedestrian being struck by a vehicle at the West Main Street hotel. Officers determined that Vaughn and Rios had been in a physical altercation in the parking lot of the hotel, according to a police report. The altercation escalated and Vaughn struck Rios with her vehicle.

Rios was treated at the scene by Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps for leg and hip injuries, according to radio reports. She was taken by ambulance to a parking field at Splish Splash, where she was transferred to a Suffolk Police MedEvac helicopter for transport to Stony Brook University Hospital. Police described her injuries as serious but not life-threatening.

Vaughn was arrested and charged with assault in the second degree, police said. She was processed and held for arraignment. Assault in the second-degree is a class D felony.

In January 2013, Vaughn was charged with prostitution in New Jersey after her arrest at a Paramus hotel. She advertised her services online and was arrested by an undercover detective at the hotel listed in the ad after she offered to perform a sexual act in exchange for money, Paramus police told NJ.com.  No information on the disposition of that charge was immediately available.

Riverhead police did not say whether Vaughn and Rios knew each other  prior to yesterday’s altercation in the hotel parking lot or whether either of the women were or had been guests at the hotel.

Editor’s note: A criminal charge is an accusation. By law, a person charged with a crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.