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Hit and run
Porter was suicidal, records say
More than 1,000 pages of court records detail a family's actions in the days after two children died in a Tampa hit-and-run.
By BRADY DENNIS and CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD
Published July 14, 2004
TAMPA - Late that night, after the crash was over and the children were dead, Lillian Porter lay in bed beside her 28-year-old daughter.
In the darkness, she tried to console Jennifer Porter.
"She couldn't sleep," the mother later said. "She woke up and she asked me to suffocate her with a pillow."
More than 1,000 pages of court documents released Tuesday portray a family frantic with worry and distraught over how to protect their daughter after she was involved in a wreck on March 31 that left 13-year-old Bryant Wilkins and his 3-year-old brother, Durontae Caldwell, dead on a Tampa street.
It took 28 hours from the time Jennifer Porter's Toyota Echo was involved in the crash for her family to contact a lawyer. It would take another four days until she stepped forward in public.
Records indicate that during that time:
No one in the Porter family suggested calling police.
Jennifer Porter threatened suicide more than once.
Her father, James, cleaned blood from the car.
Jennifer Porter drove herself to work the morning after the wreck, taught at school, then drove herself to teach dance lessons that night.
When her daughter called from school the day after the accident to say she couldn't stand it and that she wanted to turn herself in, Lillian Porter told her, "You have to finish out the day. It's hard for me, too."
* * *
Minutes after the crash, which happened about 7:30 p.m., Lillian Porter stood in her kitchen cooking dinner.
The phone rang. Jennifer Porter was crying hysterically on the other end, talking so frantically that her words were hard to understand.
"I asked her to repeat it, and she said that a body had flown through her windshield," Lillian Porter later said. "I said, "Oh, my God.' "
That frantic Wednesday night unfolded this way, according to the documents released Tuesday:
Lillian Porter told her daughter to go to her dance studio north of Tampa. "We're going to come get you," she said.
"Let's go," she said to Kurt Doiron, the boyfriend of Porter's 23-year-old sister and the only other person home when the call came. But before they met Jennifer Porter, she told Doiron to drive his blue 1999 Toyota Corolla to 22nd Street.
"Lillian wanted to find out what happened," Doiron said later.
There, a young man told them four children had been hit and two had died. They knew about the deaths before Jennifer Porter did.
As Lillian Porter and Doiron drove to the studio, Jennifer Porter kept calling, again and again. She told her mother she was going to Publix and would swallow all the pills she could buy.
"And I said to Kurt, "Drive as fast as you can, we have to get there,' " Lillian Porter later recalled. "And I was just hysterical because I was afraid she was going to kill herself before I got there."
They found Jennifer Porter alone at the studio, trembling. Lillian Porter drove the damaged Echo back to the family's home in Land O'Lakes about 9 p.m.
Jennifer Porter's sister, Kelly, had a friend named Mina visiting from Hawaii, and they were out. So Jennifer Porter gathered on a couch in the living room with her parents and Doiron.
That's when Doiron broke the news. Two children were dead.
"At that point there was sort of like implosion on Jenny's part where you kind of saw her kind of curl up and hide her face," he recalled later. "And I think I heard her say, "Oh, my God.' And she was just bawling, crying and shaking."
The hours passed, and around midnight Doiron pulled the Echo into the garage at James Porter's suggestion. Lillian Porter later said no car had been parked inside for years.
At some point, James Porter cleaned blood from the driver's window. His wife recalled him using Lysol cleaner and a paper towel.
Despite James Porter wiping blood from the Toyota Echo, Lillian Porter driving it from the studio to her home and Doiron parking it in the garage, the State Attorney's Office has not charged any of them with tampering with evidence.
"We made the choice to use them as witnesses," said Hillsborough state attorney spokeswoman Pam Bondi. "The bottom line is to strengthen our case against Jennifer Porter."
The victims were black, and the case triggered widespread outrage in the African-American community. Some people called for charges of vehicular homicide against Jennifer Porter, though prosecutors said the law and the evidence did not support that charge. And prosecuting the parents would be a tough sell to a jury.
James Porter was only protecting his daughter by cleaning the window, said the family's attorney, Barry Cohen.
"The wiping of that blood was not done with the intent to conceal," Cohen said. "That was done to keep Jennifer from seeing it (and being) more traumatized, because she was already attempting suicide."
As that Wednesday night wound to a close, James Porter decided everyone should go to work the next day.
* * *
Barely 12 hours after the fatal wreck, while Kelly Porter and her boyfriend took their out-of-town guest to Universal Studios, Jennifer Porter borrowed her sister's green Camaro and drove herself back to school at Muller Elementary.
The school sat only blocks from the accident scene.
She hadn't wanted to go, but her parents told her it would be best. Besides, she was preparing her students for a big dedication ceremony the next day.
Jennifer Porter called her mother at lunch. "She told me she couldn't stand it any longer," Lillian Porter later said, "that she couldn't stay at work, that she just wanted to get an attorney, you know, and she just wanted to turn herself in. She couldn't keep going.
"And I said, "Well, you have to finish the day out, it's hard for me, too."'
Jennifer Porter did finish the day. Then she drove herself to teach dance lessons at her studio that night. Then she drove home.
That night, she told her parents again that she couldn't go on, that she could not go back to school. She called to arrange for a substitute teacher.
About 11:45 p.m., 28 hours after the wreck, her sister's boyfriend called Cohen's office. James Porter had read about Cohen's high-profile cases. By 9 a.m. on Friday, Jennifer Porter and her parents were sitting in Cohen's downtown Tampa office.
* * *
Over the next few days, Cohen contacted Hillsborough sheriff's deputies, led them to the damaged car and told them Jennifer Porter had been the driver involved.
He also called a press conference for Monday morning. After a tumultuous five days in private, Jennifer Porter faced the public. On Monday morning, the family paced solemnly into Cohen's office and sat in front of a crush of cameras and reporters.
"Let me introduce to you the people who are here with me this morning. First of all, on my right is Jennifer Porter . . . " Cohen said. "Jennifer was the driver of the Echo Toyota that was involved in the accident this past Wednesday. And she wanted to come forward to do the right thing."
Minutes later, she unfolded a sheet of yellow legal paper and spoke softly into a cluster of microphones.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry . . ."
- Brady Dennis can be reached at dennis@sptimes.com or 813 226-3386.
[Last modified July 14, 2004, 01:22:40]
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