Taken into custody on Wednesday was 25-year-old Chante Mallard, a nurse's aide. She told police she was drinking and using the drug Ecstasy when she accidently struck Gregory Glenn Biggs, 37, at an intersection near her home. The impact tossed him onto the hood of her car, broke his legs and sent his head crashing through the windshield. Mallard said she panicked and drove home, concealing her car in the garage with Biggs still alive and curled on top of the hood.
Police said she told them that over the next two days she occasionally went out to check on Biggs and each time he pleaded with her for help. She said she apologized to him, but did nothing to help him. "I'm going to have to come up with a new word for it," Alpert said Thursday. "Cruel doesn't say enough." He said other charges may be filed against Mallard or potential accomplices. "From the contact we've had with the case, we don't know what else may come out of it," Alpert said.
After Biggs died, Mallard told police, some friends helped her extract his body from the windshield, place it in the truck of another car and dump it in a park, where it was found on Oct. 27. Mallard's attorney, Mike Heiskell, told The Associated Press that his client is only guilty of failing to stop and render aid -- not murder. He disputed the police account.
Heiskell said the victim died a few hours after Mallard drove home and was in her garage no more than 24 hours. He said her friends advised her not to call for help and suggested dumping Biggs' body. "She is not the monster that police and prosecutors are making her out to be," Heiskell said. "She was simply a frightened, emotionally distraught young woman who had an accident, panicked and made a wrong choice. Then she called some friends who also led her down the wrong path."
Chante Mallard, shown in an undated police
handout photo, has been charged with murder,
accused of hitting Gregory Glenn Biggs, 37,
with her car in Fort Worth, and then driving home
as he was lodged in the windshield
and ignoring his cries for help as he bled to death
the next two days in her garage.
From the beginning, police suspected Biggs was a victim of a hit and run, but the case went unsolved until an acquaintance of Mallad's tipped them that she may have been involved in an unreported accident. The informant said she had revealed "bits" about the incident at a party, when friends asked her why she was not driving her car.
During a search of Mallard's house late in February, police found her 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier park in the garage with blood, hair and other evidence clearly visible. The seats had been removed and were in the back yard, where one of them had been burned. She was arrested and initially charged with failure to stop and render aid, a charged that was upgraded to murder this week.
The medical examiner's autopsy report said Biggs, whose address was listed as a homeless shelter, had broken bones but did not suffer fatal internal injuries. Instead, he either bled to death or died from shock, the medical examiner told police. "If he had gotten medical attention, he probably would have survived," traffic investigator Sgt. John Fahrenthold told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The newspaper also reported that Bigg's mother, Meredith Biggs, said she had not seen her son for several years and had recently been trying to find him.
"How could she just leave him like that to die?" Meredith Biggs asked.
Mallard was released after posing $10,000 bail. If convicted, Alpert said, she could be sentenced to up to 99 years and fined up to $10,000.