By Mike Torralba
The Associated Press

LOUISVILLE - Residents of the blue-collar Portland neighborhood said the hit-and-run that killed a woman and her unborn son was not racially motivated.

A maroon minivan struck and killed Tracey Williams, 32, on Main Street late Wednesday night after a scuffle broke out between her 16-year-old son and her neighbor.

Early Friday, police charged 31-year-old Thomas Burns with two counts of murder - one for Williams' death, the other for her unborn child. He also was charged with wanton endangerment after he turned himself in to police.

The neighbor, Rod Dupin, is white; Williams, black. But both Dupin and friends of Williams said race was not behind the deaths.

Boarded-up houses and houses burned to charcoal in past fires aren't unusual sights in Portland. Drugs and alcohol abuse are problems, residents said.

However, one said the neighborhood still was relatively safe: She had heard gunshots from the streets "only three or four times" in her four years there.

But at the corner of 25th Street and Main, residents laid stuffed animals and candles under a utility pole near where Williams, a mother of five, was killed.

A woman and a small, blond girl presented Williams family members with a small token of their condolences, a statuette of hands pressed together in prayer.

"It wasn't racial," said Laticia Jones, who said she saw the incident up close, start to finish. "It's just two people arguing."

On that, Dupin agreed.

But the night of the accident, an argument turned deadly. Both sides pointed fingers at one another. Dupin and friends of Williams tell the story with diverging details.

Jones and her companion, LaMont Hobbs, said it started around 10:45 p.m. Three neighborhood girls walked up to Dupin and his girlfriend, Laura Lucian, to tell them to stop loudly arguing where the neighbors could hear them.

Lucian, Jones said, became incensed at the girls and shouted obscenities at them.

Witnesses said a man pulled up in a minivan as the crowd still lingered. Dupin denied knowing the man. Dupin said the man offered to help him but retreatedback to the car.

Police said the man peeled out in a U-turn and struck Tracey Williams, who had come out of her house. The van sped away.

Burns' attorney, Rob Chandler, said his client did not intentionally hit Williams. "He ended up in a situation where he was over his head and became very, very fearful (for) his own life and tried to protect himself and the child in the car with him and wanted to get out of there," Chandler said.

Louisville Metro Police spokesman Dwight Mitchell said police were still investigating the incident.