A jury took less than an hour Thursday to convict a former nurse’s aide of murder for hitting a man with her car, driving home with his mangled body jammed in the windshield and leaving him to die in her garage.
Chante Jawan Mallard, 27, looked down and cried silently as the judge read the verdict, which could bring a life sentence.
Later Thursday, at her sentencing hearing, Mallard tearfully apologized to Gregory Biggs’ son and her own family, saying her mind had been too muddled by fear and drugs to call for help.
“I couldn’t think to do the right thing,” she said.
After a night of drinking, smoking pot and taking Ecstasy, Mallard ran into Biggs, 37, with her Chevrolet Cavalier as he walked along the side of a highway in the early hours of Oct. 26, 2001.
He was hit with such force that his head and shoulders went through the windshield.
She said she briefly got out of the car to try to move Biggs, but panicked, got back in and drove home with his twisted, bloody body in the windshield.
She said she pulled into her garage and lowered the door, then cried and kept apologizing to Biggs.
Prosecution witnesses said Biggs probably lived for two hours, may have been moaning and gasping, and could have survived with medical treatment.
———-
Compiled from RedEye news services and edited by Lara Weber (lweber@tribune.com) and Drew Sottardi (dsottardi@tribune.com)
