Windscreen death: Woman jailed for 50 years

A woman in the US who left a homeless man she hit with her car to die a slow death while lodged in her broken windscreen has been jailed for 50 years.

Chante Mallard, 27, wept after the jury’s sentence for murdering Gregory Biggs was read at a court in Fort Worth, Texas, yesterday.

It took the jury less than an hour on Thursday to convict Mallard, who after a night of drinking and using drugs struck Mr Biggs, 37, with her car at about 3am on October 26, 2001. She drove home with the man crumpled in the windshield and left him in her garage to die.

“There’s no winners in a case like this. Just as we all lost Greg, you all will be losing your daughter,” Mr Biggs’s son, Brandon, told Mallard’s family in a statement he read in court after the sentence was announced.

Both families declined to comment afterward. “My heart is heavy, truly heavy,” said Norma Caruthers, a friend who counselled Mallard in jail.

Defense lawyer Jeff Kearney said he was upset with the length of the sentence.

“We certainly knew it would be a significant prison sentence based on all the evidence but we were hoping it would be somewhat lighter,” he said.

Medical experts testified that Mr Biggs was alive for one or two hours after being hit and probably would have survived had he received medical help.

Mallard tearfully told the jury that she was sorry, adding that she didn’t call for help because she was scared and didn’t know what to do. But prosecutor Richard Alpert said that the case “is all about selfishness”.

He said: “Some people lack the moral fibre to do the right thing. A man is lying in her car moaning and bleeding and she needs someone to tell her what to do? Any decent person would call for help.”

Mr Kearney told jurors that Mallard would not have left the man to die if she hadn’t been under the influence of alcohol, marijuana and Ecstasy.

While Mr Kearney pleaded for leniency, Mr Alpert said Mallard deserved to spend the rest of her life behind bars.

“If your sentence gives her a chance to see the light of day again she will have gotten away with (murder),” the prosecutor said.

Brandon Biggs testified earlier in the week that his father took medication for bipolar disorder and mild schizophrenia. He said his father had been homeless for a couple of years after loaning a girlfriend money and then losing his truck and home.

Mr Biggs’s battered body was found in a park the day after he was hit. Authorities had no leads in the death until four months later, when one of Mallard’s acquaintances called police and said Mallard had talked about the accident at a party.

Officers went to Mallard’s house and found the bloodstained, dented car. They also found the passenger seat burned in the back yard.

Before her trial began on Monday, Mallard pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence by burning the bloody car seat. On that charge she was sentenced to 10 years in prison, to be served concurrently with the murder sentence.

A friend of Mallard’s and his cousin pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence by dumping the body.

Clete Jackson and Herbert Cleveland received prison sentences of 10 years and nine years respectively.