GADSDEN, ala. — For some, Savannah Hardin’s final hours remain an open wound three years after she was run to death in the yard of her rural home as punishment for a lie.
The 9-year-old’s grandmother, Joyce Hardin Garrard, is going to prison after being convicted of capital murder in the case. The defense says she is remorseful. Still, others are grappling with lingering guilt over not doing something that perhaps could have kept the child alive.
Chad and Jolie Jacobs testified at Garrard’s trial that they saw the girl running while Garrard barked orders but didn’t help the child. They moved from their home partly so they wouldn’t have to keep seeing what prosecutors described as the scene of a murder.
Evidence showed Garrard made the child run as punishment for lying about candy that Savannah took from a younger girl on the school bus, and even the bus driver expressed regret.
“I feel partly responsible,” Raenna Holmes cried on the stand. “I should have paid for those candy bars.”
Prosecutors say the witnesses’ guilt is misplaced. They say only two people are to blame: Garrard and Savannah’s stepmother Jessica Mae Hardin, who is charged with murder for allegedly sitting by and doing nothing.
Marcus Reid, an assistant district attorney in Etowah County, said neighbors have been wrongly criticized for failing to help the girl. It was a call from the Jacobses that alerted police, he said.
