Driver Testifies She Didn’t Know She Hit Stepdaughter’s Husband

A Newport Beach woman accused of killing her stepdaughter’s husband by running him down with her Mercedes-Benz testified Monday that she had no idea she had hit him and only fled in her car because he had smashed her windshield in a fit of anger.

“He kept bashing, bashing, bashing,” said Betty Young Davies, using her right arm to demonstrate for jurors. “I was terrified. I thought he was going to kill me.”

But Davies was unable to answer the question that prosecutors, police and the victim’s family have been wondering about since the death more than a year ago: Why had Davies gone to her stepdaughter’s Costa Mesa home that day and watched the house from across the street?

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know,” Davies said during questioning by her attorney, Marshall M. Schulman.

Davies, whose 60th birthday is today and who lives on Lido Isle, is charged with vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run driving in the death of James Ward, 33, who was hit by her car on Congress Street the night of Dec. 19, 1989. She is on trial in Orange County Superior Court before Judge James K. Turner.

Prosecutors say Ward’s death, which came three days after he was hit, resulted from head injuries suffered when he was thrown to the pavement from the hood of Davies’ maroon Mercedes as she drove away.

Davies is accused of deliberately plowing into Ward as he stood in front of her car with his arms folded, demanding to know why Davies was harassing his family. Earlier, the Wards had complained several times to the police about Davies’ behavior.

The day of the incident, a neighbor had telephoned the Wards to warn them that she saw Davies spying on their house from behind a tree and then from behind a van. Ward talked with the neighbor on his cordless telephone as he walked outside, and the neighbor guided him to where Davies was standing.

Wendy Ward, Davies’ stepdaughter, has testified that her husband stood his ground even though she was screaming at him that Davies would kill him if he did not move from in front of her car.

At no time, Wendy Ward testified, did her husband jump onto the hood of the Mercedes or smash the windshield. Prosecutors contend that Ward’s head shattered the windshield when he was hit.

But Davies testified Monday that she did not even start the engine until after she saw Ward “bashing” her windshield with his arm. She did not say directly whether Ward struck her sedan with the telephone.

The defense has contended that Ward wielded the phone as a weapon, but prosecutors say the cordless model was not damaged, suggesting that he never hit the car with it.

Davies said she had known Wendy Ward for several years before she married Wendy’s father, John Ward, in 1975. From then on, Davies said, she always had at least some trouble getting along with her stepdaughter.

“Wendy is a very aggressive, outspoken young lady,” Davies testified.

But she said she did not feel open hostility toward Wendy Ward until 1986, when her stepdaughter accepted as a roommate a girlfriend of Davies’ son Jeff--someone Davies expressed disapproval of. She testified that she then received a “bold” warning from Wendy Ward to mind her own business.

Davies told jurors that she had gone into psychiatric care after suggestions from others in her family that her feelings toward Wendy Ward were “not normal.”

“Do you believe today that your feelings of hostility were rational?” Schulman asked her.

“Probably not,” she said.

“You knew you weren’t wanted there (at the Wards’ home)?” Schulman asked.

“That’s right,” she said.

“Do you think your being there was rational?” Schulman continued.

“No,” she answered.

On the night in question, Davies said, the Wards at first told her to go away. But after she got into the car, she said, Ward stood in the path of her vehicle. It wasn’t until she was covered with windshield glass from her head to her lap that she started the engine, she said.

“There was no time to back up. I was frightened; I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could,” she said.

Schulman asked if at any time she heard any sound indicating that she had run into Ward.

“No,” she answered.

Davies added that she could only drive back home by leaning away from the windshield crack to see the road. Later, she said, she learned that James Ward was injured.

She said she did not call the police because “it was a family matter” and she assumed the only damage done was to her windshield.

Her husband, John Davies, and one of her daughters was in court to support her. Davies, who has not yet faced cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Lewis R. Rosenblum, will continue her testimony today.