By Dale Vincent
The New Hampshire Union Leader
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Travis Hobbs and his attorney, both with tears in their eyes, embraced after a superior court jury found Hobbs not guilty of all charges Friday in the roadside death of former Amherst fire chief John Bachman last Dec. 23.
Hobbs had been charged with negligent homicide after the accident, in which Hobbs’ truck hit Bachman, 71, near the mailbox in front of his 100 Merrimack Road home.
Bachman’s widow, Marilyn, maintained the composure she exhibited as she listened to testimony during the weeklong trial. She had found her husband lying in the snow shortly after he was hit around 1 p.m.
After the verdict, she said she had been numb all week as she listened to the testimony from Amherst and state police, the state medical examinier and DNA and cellphone experts.
“It’s what the jury had to do,” she said. “They did their job.”
Saying it has been a terrible week in a terrible year, Mrs. Bachman said she would continue to promote a ban on texting while driving.The jury deliberated for about four hours Thursday afternoon and Friday morning before returning the not-guilty verdicts on a misdemeanor charge of vehicular assault and felony charges of negligent homicide and conduct after an accident.
Hobbs and his family declined to speak after the verdict was returned, but his lawyer, Eric Wilson, said Hobbs wanted to express “his sincere sorrow to the Bachman family.”
“It truly was an accident,” Wilson said, but a man died and Hobbs will never get over that.
There were no witnesses to the accident. Hobbs was on his way to his Mont Vernon home with a big bag of Christmas presents in the truck after working at his grandfather’s machine shop in Pelham. He had been texting with a friend, using a hands-free voice application on his cell phone, and she had accused him of having a bad attitude about the holidays.
He said he looked down, because his annoyance at his friend’s comment had caused him to slur his words, and looked up to see a car coming toward him, close to the center line, on the wet two-lane road with snowbanks on both sides.
Hobbs moved slightly to the right in his lane and felt a bump. It wasn’t enough to trigger the airbag and the truck’s 37 mph speed was slowed less than a mile per hour by the impact. A few minutes later, Hobbs voice-texted his friend: “I clipped a mailbox while we were talking.”
When a friend saw information on Facebook that night about a fatal hit-and-run on Merrimack Road, Hobbs realized he had hit the 71-year-old Bachman, not a mailbox.
He went to Amherst police with his parents to report what happened. Hobbs answered questions, wrote out a statement, turned over his cell phone and willingly took blood tests that showed no alcohol or drugs. Police impounded his truck, which had damage to the right front fender, a broken right front headlight and mirror dangling by the control cord.
The mirror had been glued after it was broken earlier.
Assistant Hillsborough County Attorney Charlene Dulac, who had argued Hobbs was trying to manually correct a text and was not paying attention to the road when his truck struck Bachman, said the Legislature needs to take a look at whether the laws on texting are adequate. In this situation, she said, “nobody wins.”
Wilson, who had engaged a prosecution witness in a demonstration of all-verbal texting, from waking the phone to deciding to send or cancel the voice-generated message after it’s read back, said texting is increasingly a way of life, especially for younger people.
Wilson had urged the jury to make its decision based on evidence, not emotion, saying that nothing would bring back the victim.
(c)2014 The New Hampshire Union Leader (Manchester, N.H.)
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