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Hit and run

Porter's family key in defense

The teacher involved in a fatal hit-and-run could be portrayed as misled by her family, attorneys say.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published July 25, 2004

TAMPA - Jennifer Porter is two years shy of her 30th birthday, but she has never lived on her own.

Until she was charged with leaving the scene of a crash that killed two siblings and injured two others March 31, she earned more than $30,000 a year teaching dance at Muller Elementary School and ran her own dance studio. Yet she still lived with her parents and her sister Kelly, 23, in a three-bedroom home in Land O'Lakes.

Porter has no current love interest and few close friends, according to court documents. Her mother told prosecutors that Porter's best friends are "her sister and myself."

So that night, after Porter drove her family's Toyota Echo up 22nd Street and saw a body "fly into the windshield," her first reaction was immediate and familiar.

Hysterical, she picked up her cell phone and called her mother.

As horrified bystanders frantically sought help for the four children who lay in the street, Porter drove to her dance studio, where her mother told her to go.

From that point on, according to sworn statements, the 28-year-old relied on her parents for guidance on how to proceed.

"To your knowledge," prosecutor Kim Seace asked her mother, Lillian Porter, in an April 22 interview, "did anything prevent Jennifer from going back to the scene of the crash?"

"We told her not to go back," her mother said.

"Okay," Seace said. "But she's 28, she's a big girl."

"She looks to us for support," Mrs. Porter said.

Jennifer Porter's trial on a charge of leaving the scene of a fatal crash, a felony with a maximum 15-year sentence, is scheduled for Oct. 25. Her parents, in exchange for speaking with prosecutors, were granted immunity from being charged with anything they may have done in the aftermath of that crash.

Still, the family's relationship with Porter is likely to be played out in the courtroom.

Local defense attorneys say the family's closeness, and the way they immediately circled around Porter as a sort of protective shield, isn't the basis for a defense. But it could help gain sympathy from the jury, or from the judge at sentencing. Porter could be portrayed as an overprotected child who was misled by her parents in the days after the hit-and-run.

"I think all of that is part of a big sympathy play to win favor with the jurors," said attorney Rick Terrana. "Juries have been known to acquit people for less legally sound reasons. Sometimes you've got to work with what you have, you know?"

Barry Cohen, Porter's attorney, would not discuss his defense strategy.

"I can say they are a very loving family," he said. "A very close family."

In court documents released last week, Porter's father emerges as the dominant figure in that tight-knit nuclear unit.

Her sister Kelly Porter's boyfriend Kurt Doiron, who also lived in the home on Bellaire Loop, told prosecutors that Mrs. Porter ended her first five-minute conversation with Jennifer Porter by saying: "I have to call your father."

James "Greg" Porter initially told his wife their daughter needed to return to the scene. But Mrs. Porter told prosecutors her daughter wasn't "emotionally able to go back" because "she was afraid of what she would see, that maybe there was a dead body or whatever."

Bryant Wilkins, 13, and little brother Durontae Caldwell, 3, were killed. Their siblings Aquina Wilkins, 8, and LaJuan Davis, 2, were injured.

Mrs. Porter said her husband decided the Echo needed to be driven home from the dance studio, and she volunteered to drive it. He then told Doiron to move the Echo into the family garage. The father used Lysol to wipe bloody fluid from the Echo so that Jennifer Porter wouldn't have to see it, her mother said.

She said her husband, a postal worker, was the one who later that night told everyone in the family to go to work the next day, to act as if nothing had happened.

In his statement to prosecutors, Doiron said that within hours of the crash - and again the following night - Porter told her family she wanted to turn herself in.

But Porter's parents said no, that they needed to call a lawyer first. The parents decided on Cohen, a well-known Tampa defense lawyer they had heard about. It was Doiron - not Porter herself - who called Cohen the evening after the hit-and-run.

Five days after the crash, as Porter sat before reporters in a conference room in Cohen's office to say she was "sorry, so sorry," her father sat next to her. Her mother and sister were just a few steps away.

With little makeup on her round, somber face and her long, straight hair parted down the middle, Porter looked like a scared teenager. She said little beyond the apology. Her lawyer did the talking.

Even prosecutors questioned Mrs. Porter about why her daughter, a decade past her 18th birthday, still lived at home and seemed to have few friends outside her family.

"Why she stays at home, at age 28, is it just by choice or is it just financially convenient?" Seace asked.

"Both," Mrs. Porter replied.

Asked to name her daughter's close friends, she said: "Best girlfriend, probably her sister and myself."

Defense attorney John Fitzgibbons, who is not connected to the case, agrees with other lawyers that a jury might be sympathetic to the fact that Porters' parents instructed her not to go to authorities right away.

But he said it's risky for her lawyer to pursue that angle "because the prosecution will, blow by blow, detail the coverup." Prosecutors likely will point out that Porter is an adult who could have made her own decisions.

"But the whole thing just doesn't make anyone in the family look good," Fitzgibbons said. "At this point there's no dispute she was involved in the accident and had an obligation to stop. The question is, why didn't she?"

Porter was born in Tampa on Feb. 9, 1976, the eldest daughter of Greg and Lillian Porter. Several years later, following the birth of her sister Kelly, Porter's parents bought a 2,000-square-foot house in Land O'Lakes in Pasco County.

At River Ridge High, Porter was known for being quiet and shy but driven, focused on whatever task lay ahead. Co-workers at Muller Elementary described her the same way.

Friends who attended high school and the University of South Florida with Porter have described her as sensitive and deeply attached to her Catholic family. She did not drink or party, they said, never strayed far from home. She had long dreamed of being a teacher and having her own dance studio.

She opened the Dance Arts Center of Tampa in Wesley Chapel last year.

Kelly Porter taught classes there; her mother, a teacher's aide at Lake Myrtle Elementary in Land O'Lakes, sometimes helped answer phones.

Mrs. Porter told prosecutors her daughter was so upset the night of the hit-and-run, she retreated to her parents' bedroom. Mrs. Porter said she slept there with her daughter, holding her as she cried and trembled.

In the middle of the night, Porter woke up and asked her mother to do one last thing for her.

"She woke up," Mrs. Porter said, "and she asked me to suffocate her with a pillow."

Even weeks after the hit-and-run, Mrs. Porter continued to shield her daughter.

A prosecutor asked Mrs. Porter whether she ever spoke with her daughter to determine exactly what happened that night.

"No," Mrs. Porter said. "I have tried to talk about it as little as possible because it's too upsetting to her and me."

- Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at 813 226-3373 or svansickler@sptimes.com

[Last modified July 25, 2004, 00:33:01]