A former police chief and a patron at a Morrow Cracker Barrel testified Thursday they saw Troy Dale West punch Army reservist Tasha Hill at the restaurant.
"I heard some noise like thumping and loud pounding," Ginger Ellis told the Clayton County jury. The Forest Park resident was sitting in one of the restaurant's rocking chairs out front with her boyfriend at the time of the Sept. 9, 2009, incident.
"I opened the door," Ellis said. "I heard a lady's voice. She was stating she was in the United States Army. She seemed like she was scared."
Both Hill and West had come to the the Cracker Barrel for dinner with their families. Their lives collided, literally, in an instant. Hill told West to be careful because he had almost hit her daughter with the door. What happened from there is in dispute. West insists Hill spat on him. She denies it.
Ellis' testimony came on the second day of the trial of West, a southwest Georgia businessman. West was indicted last year on charges of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, first-degree cruelty to children, two counts of battery and two counts of disorderly conduct. The FBI also is looking at the case as a possible hate crime because West is white and Hill is black.
Minutes before the altercation occurred, Ellis said she had commented on how cute Hill's daughter looked in her tutu as they were entering the restaurant to have dinner. Hill, 36, who works for the Department of Defense as a civilian, and her daughter had just come from the child's ballet lesson. Ellis said she saw Hill cowering in the vestibule trying to deflect West's punches by covering her head.
When asked by assistant district attorney Jason Green how many times West hit Hill, Ellis said, "I would say a bunch. I was scared of the violence."
Ellis said West left the restaurant through the door she was holding open but not before telling her, "‘That [racial epithet] shouldn't have spit in my face.' He was passing through the door when he said that to me."
Retired Morrow police chief Dave Rayburn was standing outside the restaurant talking to relatives when he heard "sounds of a scuffle."
"I turned to look and the door was open. I could see a tall white male who appeared to be in a fight. ... It wasn't my family member so I turned back around and continued my conversation."
Then he said he heard someone say a woman was being hit and Rayburn got involved. "I stepped between the man and the woman."
Both Ellis and Rayburn pointed to West when asked if the man who had hit the woman was in the courtroom. When asked whether the defendant was "taking it easy on her" when he punched Hill, Rayburn replied, "No."
Both sides also questioned a Cracker Barrel investigator at length using a frame-by-frame account of the incident, which was captured on video by the restaurant's surveillance camera.
The trial resumes at 8 a.m. Friday.
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