The trial of a Fayetteville woman accused in the 2019 shooting of a man after a hit-and-run crash in Clayton County was postponed Monday after the defendant’s attorney was found in contempt of court.
Jury selection in the trial of Hannah Payne was supposed to begin at 9 a.m. Monday, but defense attorney Matt Tucker was a no show. It wasn’t until after Superior Court Judge Shana Rooks Malone queried Payne about Tucker’s whereabouts that the court learned he had suffered a stroke over the weekend and had been hospitalized.
Because he had not informed the court, he was found in contempt and the judge instructed Payne to seek a new attorney.
“He’s in trouble now,” Lenell Lucas, a member of the Clayton County chapter of the NAACP, who attended the proceedings, said of Tucker. “That’s not good that (the judge) is recommending she get different counsel.”
It was unclear Monday when the trial would resume.
Payne was indicted in July 2019 on charges of felony murder, malice murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and possession of a firearm in the May death that year of 62-year-old Kenneth Herring.
She has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors accuse Payne of following Herring’s truck after it struck another vehicle on Clark Howell Highway and Ga. 85, despite being Payne being advised by 911 dispatchers to stay at the scene of the hit-and-run accident.
Payne and a Georgia Department of Corrections Officer, both of whom had witnessed the accident, stopped to help the victims. Herring initially stayed at the scene of the crash and the corrections officer noticed that he appeared to be suffering from a possible diabetic episode.
But after 20 minutes of waiting, Herring left the accident and Payne pursued, saying she worried he would cause another accident, according to reports.
She followed the truck about a mile to the intersection of Riverdale Road and Forest Parkway. There, Payne allegedly blocked Herring in with her car and got out to confront him with a gun, Clayton Police said.
“In the background, you can hear (Payne say), ‘Get out of the car. Get out of the car,” Clayton Police Detective Keon Hayward said in earlier court proceedings.
The two scuffled, according to reports, and Payne allegedly shot Herring in the abdomen and killed him.
Tucker, Payne’s attorney, told Channel 2 Action News at the time that his client had been provoked when Herring’s truck hit her vehicle. Tucker also said Payne fired in self-defense after Herring bruised her and ripped her shirt.
Police, however, said the two vehicles never collided during the incident.
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