She had a speech planned, but once on the stand Wednesday, Valerie Bray said she would speak from the heart.
"I would never intentionally run anybody over, leave them on the road, and not render help. Because that's not me, sir," she told Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Tom Greenholtz.
Then she turned to the parents of Cameron Bean, the 28-year-old runner she hit on Moccasin Bend Road on Sept. 19, 2015, and who died two days later. A packed courtroom stared back, with Bray's supporters on one side and Bean's supporters on the other.
"I'm so, so sorry," she said, offering to sit down with the family, to find whatever healing there was left to find - if there was any. "If there's anything I can do to help, I would. And God bless you."
Then she grabbed the paper bearing her speech and hobbled off the witness stand, using a cane to return to her seat at the defense table.
Wednesday marked an emotional highpoint in the hit-and-run case of Bean, who died after police said Bray swerved across the center line on Moccasin Bend Road, struck him from behind, and left the scene. Greenholtz listened to six hours of testimony before moving the next court date to March 3. That gives him a month to decide the ultimate question from Wednesday's proceedings: Whether Bray should go straight to probation or spend at least three months in custody.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Lance Pope argued for custody, though not at the Department of Corrections, which is reserved for the most violent and repetitive offenders, he said.
With Bray, he said, the state had a case in which a 60-year-old woman with five prior misdemeanor convictions could serve as an example to not commit a similar crime because there would be repercussions. Although Bray already pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and leaving the scene of an accident, although she said she thought she hit a deer, it didn't justify driving to the Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute and abandoning Bean to die, Pope said.
According to Bray's statement, which was not subject to cross examination, she stopped the car a little farther up the road after thinking she hit a deer. With glass in her eyes and hair, she got out of the car, checked the front, didn't see any animal, and continued on to Moccasin Bend, her workplace of nearly 20 years. There, she said she reported it to an employee and called police, she said.
Around that time, she added, a bicyclist came up and said, "you know that you didn't hit a deer." Since that time, Bray and several other family members said, she has been completely broken, in and out of depressive cycles, losing weight, juggling a host of long-time medical issues like multiple sclerosis and a bulging disc in her back, and attempting to care for her 89-year-old mother.
Pope called that bicyclist, Brian Friberg, who said he and his wife were riding on Moccasin Bend Road when she noticed a shoe in the road and then Bean's body on the side of the road. They called 911 and stayed with him until an officer arrived. Friberg said he later came across Bray at Moccasin Bend, with glass in her hair and damage to her car, and he quickly realized what had happened.
"We were both just shocked by what we had witnessed," Friberg said.
Bray's defense lawyers, Bill Speek and Gerald Webb, called nine witnesses to the stand to defend Bray.
A brother and sister traveled from Connecticut to recall the time Bray saved their mother's life by finding a way into her home while she was having a stroke. A former co-worker at Moccasin Bend said she still calls Bray for advice six years later. Her daughter, Nichole, testified about the time Bray's sister, Florence, had a heart attack while they were driving on Interstate 75 in 2006. Bray flagged down help, got an officer to escort her, and drove straight to Parkridge, where doctors operated unsuccessfully for two hours.
Webb and Speek argued that Bray wouldn't hold up in jail because of her medical condition and that any prior convictions being used to enhance her sentence happened more than 25 years ago and didn't represent the person she was now. They suggested probation and added Bray would caution community members about the seriousness of car accidents by sharing her story. She was redeemable.
The purpose of a sentencing hearing is for a judge to hear all of this evidence, evaluate the range of punishment, and then devise a sentence. Speek said Bray faces one to two years maximum for each charge, both of which are class E felonies, the lowest-grade felony.
Greenholtz also heard from Bean's parents, Steve and Lisa, who gave powerful speeches on the stand. Cameron Bean always called his mother by her first name because he knew she would listen to that, Lisa Bean said.
"I almost don't know what to say," she told the judge. "My heart is broken. I don't wish that on anybody."
But, she continued, "there are consequences for negligence. We have to live the rest of our lives without him."
There was a pause as the courtroom looked on.
"It's just my heart," she said.
Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at zpeterson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow him on Twitter @zackpeterson918.