Alive 2 Hours Stuck In Windshield

According To Medical Examiner's Testimony In Texas Hit-And-Run Case

(CBS/AP)  A homeless man who was hit by a car and left lodged in its windshield was probably alive that way for about two hours, the county medical examiner testified Wednesday at the driver's murder trial.

"He was obviously in severe, excruciating pain," Dr. Nizam Peerwani testified in the third day of the trial of Chante Mallard, who is accused of hitting Gregory Biggs with her car and leaving him to die in her windshield.

Mallard's attorneys do not dispute that she hit Biggs as he walked along a highway early on the morning of Oct. 26, 2001, but they argue that it was an accident, not murder.

Peerwani, testifying outside the presence of the jury, said Biggs bled to death from a leg mangled by the front bumper of Mallard's car. Biggs also suffered other broken bones and internal injuries.

Mallard, a 27-year-old nurse's aide, faces life in prison if convicted.

On Tuesday, Clete Jackson, who has pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence in the case, testified that Mallard had borrowed another car and picked him up about six hours after she struck Biggs.

Mallard showed him the car, parked in her garage with Biggs still in the windshield, Jackson said. The two drove to another apartment to discuss what to do. Mallard had been drinking and doing drugs shortly before hitting the Biggs.

"I said, `We ain't going to burn nobody.' We're going to put him somewhere so his family can find him so they can bury him, because it was an accident," Jackson said, his voice sometimes quivering.

That night, Jackson and his cousin, Herbert Tyrone Cleveland, went with Mallard to her house. Jackson said he apologized to the lifeless Biggs as he spread a blanket on the garage floor and extracted the body.

Biggs' remains were found in Cobb Park on Oct. 27, 2001.

Jackson and Cleveland pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence in exchange for their testimony at Mallard's trial. Jackson was sentenced to 10 years, Cleveland to nine years.

A Fort Worth Fire Department captain and an emergency room doctor earlier testified that Biggs — who suffered multiple broken bones — could have survived if he had received medical attention.

The case has stirred a Ft. Worth legal debate over whether murder charges fit the crime.

"Does bringing the guy home in your windshield and not giving him any aid and letting him die, is that murder?" local attorney Greg Westfall asked CBS News.