Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Testimony emotional as trial begins in fatal vehicular attack

Members of Todd Byers' family take the witness stand, reluctantly recounting the fight that killed him.

By JAMAL THALJI
Published November 30, 2005

DADE CITY - For two years the Byers family hoped it wouldn't come to this. They wanted a plea deal in the Timothy Hahn murder case as much as anyone. They didn't want to testify. They didn't want to relive Sept. 15, 2003, the night Hahn is accused of repeatedly, and fatally, running over Todd Byers.

After 11 months of fruitless plea negotiations, that dreaded day arrived Tuesday: the start of Hahn's first-degree murder and attempted murder trial.

The first state witnesses were reluctant and emotional. They were Todd Byers' family.

"What did (Hahn) do when you saw him behind the wheel?" prosecutor Stacey Sumner asked.

"He just gunned for us," said Patty Byers.

She survived the vehicular attack that killed her brother-in-law.

Months after she learned to use her scarred legs again, she walked into court as the first of three witnesses testifying how a brawl led to the 40-year-old Louisiana tugboat captain's death in the parking lot of a Land O'Lakes gas station.

During the fight Hahn, got back into his red Pontiac Grand Prix. Todd Byers wrested a baseball bat from an attacker and banged it against the hood, a red-eyed Patty Byers said.

"I had ahold of Todd's arm and I was saying "Let's get out of here,' " she said. "The next thing I know I was on the ground. I didn't know what happened to us. I didn't know what hit us."

"How many times did you see the vehicle strike your brother and your wife?" the prosecutor asked witness Steven Byers.

"Twice," he said.

He rushed to his fallen brother to give him CPR.

"There was just no response," Steven Byers said. "His eyes were just glazed, looking away. He gave me the death growl ..."

Crying, his voice trailed. In the courtroom, his brother, Dean, and the witness' daughter, Jennifer Byers-Mueller, bowed their heads and looked away.

Hahn, 25, wearing a white shirt, dark slacks and tie, sat silently through the first day of testimony, occasionally jotting down notes.

"He backed up and gunned it as I was standing there just two feet from the car," said Julie Barrilleaux, who was engaged to Todd Byers that day. "He just looked straight ahead. He didn't even look back when he backed up."

Under cross-examination, Barrilleaux offered another view of Hahn in the driver's seat: "He just had a mean look, like he had hate in his eyes."

"Now you didn't mention that the first time," defense attorney Keith Hammond said. Her reply: "Well I can't remember everything at one time."

The defense doesn't dispute Hahn's role, just his state of mind. If Hammond can persuade jurors that it wasn't premeditated, that it was committed in the heat of the moment, they might convict on a lesser charge, sparing Hahn a life sentence.

The attorney's best shot came when the state called Hahn's associates from that night to the stand. They drank and used drugs that day but in court tried to soften the case against Hahn, describing him as distraught, confused, even suicidal.

Some encouraged him to flee the state, which he did, until his capture in Tennessee days later. The car was found dumped in a Lutz pond.

Courtney Bryant took part in the brawl and was run over when Hahn backed up the car while ramming Todd Byers. She then fled the scene with him.

"Can you describe what Timothy Hahn's attitude was like in the vehicle?" Sumner asked.

"He was pretty messed up," Bryant said. "He was high, and he had been drinking. I don't think he knew what was going on. He kept saying "Oh my God. Oh my God. What just happened back there?' He was upset."

"What did you say?" the prosecutor asked.

"I think you just killed two people," Bryant said.

Hahn responded with vulgarities, Bryant said, that indicated he knew he was in trouble, believing he had taken one, and perhaps as many as three lives.

Bryant and Sumner dueled over Hahn's suspected use of ecstasy that night. The prosecutor asked the witness if the drug could have fueled Hahn's rage; Bryant denied it. The next state witness, Rachel Bateman, Hahn's childhood friend from Michigan, said they had all taken ecstasy that night.

"Tim had never taken it before," she said. "But I saw it in his eyes. He was on something.

"(On ecstasy) if you're happy, you're happy. If you're set off, you can get violent and angry and black out. It's happened to me before."

[Last modified November 30, 2005, 02:15:38]