A woman has been found not guilty of intentionally hitting her neighbor with a car after a jury agreed she thought it was her only way to avoid death.
Zoe Anne Gooding was found not guilty of one count of “malicious act intending to cause serious harm” and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle in the Townsville District Court in Queensland on Thursday.
Ms Gooding had been accused of attempting to “seriously harm” her neighbour, Michael Usher, when she hit him with her car on Holbourne Street in Bushland Beach in June 2022.
Originally, the neighbors were friends and had invited each other for Christmas in the past, but that changed when Gooding accused Usher and his wife of being pedophiles on social media in September 2021.
Gooding never denied hitting Usher with her car, but claimed she feared for her life when he and another man ran toward her on the night of June 17.
Crown prosecutor Thomasina Papadimitriou told jurors the incident was deliberate and was “the culmination of an ugly neighborhood dispute.”
However, Gooding’s defense attorney, Darin Honchin, said his client’s actions were appropriate since she “thought they were going to kill her.”
A jury of five men and seven women found Mrs Gooding not guilty of both charges and she was seen being pushed out of the court in a wheelchair after the verdict was read.
Zoe Anne Gooding was found not guilty of two charges of attempting to cause grievous harm in the Townsville District Court (pictured) on Thursday.
Honchin said Gooding “feared for her life” because she believed Usher was approaching her car to hold her “accountable for what he believed she had done.”
“This was a neighborhood beset by a lot of problems, but that night, two men aggressively approached Mrs. Gooding in the dark,” Mr. Honchin told the jury. Townsville Newsletter reports.
Mrs Gooding had previously accused Mr Usher of making loud noises outside her home and looking in the windows.
But Usher, who had already successfully sued Gooding for defamation after she spread a rumor that he and his wife were trying to groom their six-year-old daughter, recalled a very different version of the events that led to his approach. to the car.
Papadimitriou said Usher had been watching football with his friends when they heard Gooding leave his house and sit in his car before starting to rev the engine.
The court was told Mr Usher and a friend allegedly tried to confiscate his car keys to stop the disturbance.
As they tried to force her to turn off the engine, a man kicked Ms Gooding’s car, causing her to swerve out of the driveway and hit Mr Usher for the first time.
Usher fell and hit his head while Gooding allegedly drove to the end of the cul-de-sac without turning on his lights and parked across the street.
Ms Gooding was accused of trying to harm her neighbor Michael Usher, who had previously sued her for calling him and his wife pedophiles on social media in 2021.
When the men caught up with her, she drove straight towards Mr Usher, who was three to five meters away, hitting him directly and causing him to fall over the bonnet as she drove away.
Honchin said Gooding feared for her safety because the men were much larger than her and she thought they were only following her to kill her.
«She left, they followed her and approached again. “They headed toward his car together, and she then became afraid, feared for her life, and accelerated and hit him as she did so,” he said.
The blow fractured Mr. Usher’s rotator cuff twice, requiring surgery, caused an abrasion to his skull and broke three ribs.
Papadimitriou told the court he doubted how scared Mrs Gooding really was during the incident.
“Was she really scared when she hit Mr. Usher at the end of the cul-de-sac or is she a woman who gets angry when things don’t go her way? Did she want to hurt the man she hated, with whom she had an ongoing feud, a man she was frankly sick of that night? she said in her final statement.
Papadimitriou said Gooding intended to hit Usher with his car because he was at a “boiling point.”
Mrs Gooding “wanted to hurt him”, Mr Papadimitriou told the court.
Gooding hit Usher with his car in June 2022 after he and a friend approached his car at night. She called triple-0 immediately after the incident and admitted hitting him at the time.
On the second day of the trial, Ms Gooding’s triple 0 call following the incident was played to the court and on the call she could be heard crying hysterically.
She told the emergency operator that Mr. Usher and his friend had come running toward her before she tried to hit them with her car.
Ms Gooding never denied hitting Mr Usher but said she did not remember it clearly because she had “blacked out” at the time.
During the triple-0 call, Gooding said she couldn’t remember exactly what had happened, other than that Usher had run toward her and that she in turn punched him.
‘…they were making too much noise, I just fainted. “I’ve never been so scared and angry at the same time,” she said on the call.
Papadimitriou said there was no medical evidence to explain why this had happened.
The crown also questioned Mrs Gooding’s authenticity based on the fact that A police investigation into her claim that Mr. Usher and his wife were pedophiles led to no charges or arrests.
Judge Jennifer Rosengren adjourned the case on Wednesday, and the jury took less than a day to deliberate and ruled that Ms. Gooding was innocent.