Congratulations, Aqua !!
Congratulations, Aqua !!
Mallard pleads not guilty to murder - smoked pot,
took ecstasy and drank heavily before hit and runExcerpt:
FORT WORTH, Texas - A former nurse's aide smoked pot, took ecstasy and drank heavily in the hours before she hit a homeless man and drove home while he was lodged in her windshield, prosecutors and defense attorneys told jurors as her murder trial began Monday.
Chante Jawan Mallard, 27, faces life in prison if convicted. She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, tampering with evidence, before attorneys began their opening statements on the murder charge.
Although she had taken drugs, Mallard could have stopped at a nearby fire or police station or called an ambulance after she hit Gregory Biggs on a highway in the early hours of Oct. 26, 2001, prosecutor Christy Jack said.
"All of a sudden -- bam -- he was just there," Mallard said in a statement to police, which Jack read to jurors.
Mallard did stop briefly to try and get Biggs off her car, but when she couldn't, she drove about a mile to her home, Jack said. Mallard then called one of her friends to pick her up, Jack said.
She and her friend then went to find Mallard's ex-boyfriend to figure out what to do next. When they couldn't find him, they went back to the house, where Mallard took the friend into the garage, Jack said. By that time, Biggs was dead, still lodged and bleeding in the jagged windshield.
The friend told Mallard to call 911, Jack said.
"Chante refused because she didn't want her parents to know what she'd done and didn't want to go to jail," Jack said.
Defense attorney Jeff Kearney said Mallard was in a drug-induced haze and had been hit in the face with flying glass when the car hit Biggs. He said she doesn't dispute what happened, but it was an accident, not murder.
She was just one exit from her home, so she kept driving with "a body entirely in her car, the head in the floorboard, legs going in directions that no one thought humanely possible. You can't imagine," Kearney said.
