HOUSTON – Ignoring frantic pleas to stop, a woman who had just found her husband with his lover accelerated her silver Mercedes-Benz and ran him over, the man's teenage daughter testified.
Lindsey Harris, who was a passenger in the car, told jurors in her stepmother's murder trial that her father pushed the other woman out of harm's way and pleaded with his wife to stop.
"He was really scared," Harris, 17, testified Wednesday. "He was trying to get away and he couldn't."
Clara Harris, 44, is accused of intentionally running over her husband, David Harris, in a hotel parking lot July 24. She has claimed the death was an accident.
If convicted, she faces up to life in prison. If jurors conclude she acted under the legal definition of sudden passion, they could consider a lighter sentence of two to 20 years in prison.
Testimony was to resume Thursday afternoon.
"I knew she was mad -- just her face. It was red and she had this evil look," a composed Lindsey Harris told jurors as her stepmother sat with her hands covering her face.
"She was going for my dad. He tried to stop her. ... She was very determined."
The teenager said she screamed and tried to get out of the car, but it was traveling too fast.
"I just yelled, 'Stop! You're killing him!"
Prosecutors say Clara Harris was enraged because David Harris chose his lover, Gail Bridges, over her. Bridges worked for him at his dental practice until Clara Harris, also a dentist, learned of the affair and fired Bridges.
The teenager said she partially blamed the affair on her stepmother's lack of attention to her father, but said she told her father he should not leave her stepmother for Bridges, whom she described as "the personification of evil."
Lindsey Harris testified her father was struck once and then her stepmother circled around and hit him two more times, never trying to avoid him. The teenager said she jumped out and hit her stepmother when the car finally stopped.
"I knew she had killed my dad," she testified.
"She said, 'I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. It was an accident.' She knew what she did and she wasn't sorry."
Lindsey Harris also testified her stepmother decided to retire to have more time for her family and was going to have plastic surgery ""to make herself look very pretty so Dad would want her and not Gail."
"I was, like, 'Look, give up.' But she didn't want to," the girl said.
Under cross-examination by defense attorney George Parnham, she told jurors she has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her stepmother.
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