Questions about ‘Eric’ again surface at retrial
First responders paint a clearer picture of the scene than they did in the first trial of suspect in girl’s burning death
BATESVILLE, Miss. – Testimony in the retrial of Quinton Tellis for the 2014 burning death of Jessica Chambers opened Tuesday with attempts to answer the lingering question from the first trial — who was Eric? Or, as Civil Defense Director Daniel Cole later testified, “Hhh... Hhh... Hairc.” First responders painted a much more detailed picture of the scene than they did in the first trial, which ended with a hung jury, going more in depth about what they actually heard firsthand. While two held out that they had helped Chambers and heard her clearly, several others testified they did not hear her or said she was so hard to hear that they had to get on the ground “in her face” to hear the sounds she was making.
Prosecutors and the defense team set the tone with opening statements, in which Assistant District Attorney Jay Hale warned jurors they would hear the name “Eric” early from witnesses, but that investigators had exhausted every lead related to anyone by that name or something similar.
Defense attorney Darla Palmer, meanwhile, told the jury emphatically that Chambers “walked and talked” after first responders found her and told them who had burned her.
“She talked to trained people and told these first responders one name,” Palmer said. “And that name was Eric.”
That was partly true, according to those first responders. She walked out of the woods, according to firefighters Jody Morris and Seth Cook.
Opening statements
Opening statements and the first three witnesses — the last of them a speech pathologist called by prosecutors in an attempt to blunt the references to “Eric” jurors were sure to hear — occupied the first morning of Tellis’ retrial for the Dec. 6, 2014, burning death of Chambers, a 19-year-old Courtland, Miss., resident found stumbling on fire from her burning Kia Rio sedan.
Jurors were selected Monday in Starkville and transported to Batesville, where the trial is expected to continue through the week and possibly into early next week.
In his opening statement, Hale outlined the scenario prosecutors intend to lay out, the same one jurors heard in last October’s first trial in the same courtroom and before the same circuit judge, Gerald Chatham.
Hale said investigators explored every tip they received and every Eric or Derek in the area before revisiting their evidence and discovering phone data that he said puts Tellis in the same location as Chambers the evening she died. He said testimony will show that Tellis was the last person with whom Chambers had contact.
“I know when you hear all the evidence the state has, you’re going to have plenty of evidence to convict,” Hale said in concluding his 15-minute opening.
Palmer, a Jackson, Miss., attorney who represents Tellis along with Alton Peterson of Jackson, said in her statement that no matter what the prosecution says, they cannot counter the evidence “that can’t be ignored.”
“The evidence will always show that Eric did it,” she said in wrapping up a shorter, 5-minute opening statement.
Lisa Chambers takes the stand
Chambers’ mother, Lisa Chambers, was the prosecution’s first witness. As in the first trial, she described her daughter as a sweet girl who liked to play softball and liked cheerleading.
She testified that Jessica came home the day of Dec. 6 at about 12:30 to 1 p.m. She said she put on pajama pants and went to sleep in a chair until a phone call or text awakened her later that afternoon. Chambers said her daughter then left, about 5 p.m., saying she was going to get something to eat and clean her car and then would be back.
After identifying her smiling daughter in a now-familiar photo of Jessica in her pink bedroom holding a phone, Lisa Chambers teared up as she described the next time she saw her daughter late that night in the burn unit of Regional One Hospital in Memphis.
Chambers said doctors told her and her ex-husband, Ben Chambers, that Jessica had third-degree burns on 93 to 98 percent of her body and had no chance of survival.
On cross-examination, Palmer asked Lisa Chambers about her daughter’s drug use and whether she had been in rehab. Chambers said her daughter had been in a facility to straighten her life out, but she said she wasn’t aware of Jessica selling drugs.
Kesha Myer and a new witness
Kesha Myer, a close friend of Jessica, took the stand next. Myer said in response to questioning by District Attorney John Champion that she, Chambers and Tellis went riding around Courtland the morning of Dec. 6.
Myer testified that Chambers had just introduced her to Tellis in the days before Dec. 6, and he sat quietly in the back seat as Chambers drove and Myer sat in the front seat with her. She said they drove by the spot where Chambers’ car was found on fire later that day.
On cross-examination, Peterson again raised the issue of drug use by Chambers, asking Myer how Jessica was doing before she had begun “getting better.” Champion objected to questioning about Chambers’ prior condition, and Chatham told Peterson to move on in his questioning.
Morning testimony closed with a new witness since the first trial, speech language pathologist Carolyn Higdon, a professor of communication sciences and disorders at the University of Mississippi.
After Chatham accepted Higdon as an expert witness following questioning by Champion and Peterson, she testified about the biology involved in forming sounds. Without the lungs, tongue, cheeks and soft palate of the mouth all functioning properly, Higdon said it would be impossible to make articulate sounds.
Higdon reviewed testimony from the first trial and autopsy photos to conclude that speech for Chambers after her burns would have been difficult.
Peterson, on cross-examination, tried to establish that Higdon’s opinion was based on testimony from after the badly burned Chambers arrived at Regional One and from her autopsy. Peterson questioned whether Chambers might still have been able to enunciate at the fire site on Herron Road, where a parade of first responders testified in October that Chambers said something that sounded like “Eric” or “Derek” when asked who had set her on fire.
But Higdon said it was unlikely Chambers could have voiced a clear name within as little as two minutes of when she was set on fire.
“My expert opinion, given the severity of what I saw, is that it would have been impossible for her to make articulate sounds,” Higdon told Peterson.
Asked directly by Peterson if Chambers would have been able to say “Eric,” Higdon’s response was that she thought it would have been impossible.
First responders talk more freely
A line of first responders, much like in the last trial, took the stand to tell the story from the scene.
This time, however, former Courtland Fire Department Fire Chief Cole Haley told the story of arriving and seeing Chambers walking toward the firefighters. He got a blanket to put around her and attempted to walk her to the front of the fire engine, he said. But she collapsed at the back of the truck.
Other responders, as expected, described the scene and talked about how they thought they heard Chambers say “Eric” set her on fire.
Daniel Cole, the Panola County director of emergency operations, said Chambers’ tongue was swollen and red, and that she was difficult to understand. He described Chambers’ sound as a sort of breathless, one-syllable response that to him sounded more like “Eric” than anything else.
“She was frustrated with us, and we were getting frustrated with her,” Cole said.