Jury finds Rochester woman guilty in hit-and-run that severely injured jogger

Joyce Howard was on the stand for about an hour during cross-examination. (Rochester Voice photo)

DOVER - It took a Strafford County jury less than two hours today to find a Rochester woman guilty of leaving the scene of an accident and second degree assault when she struck a Rochester man while he was jogging past her vehicle at the corner of Mcduffee and North Main Street in Rochester in October 2021.
Joyce Howard, 70, was released pending sentencing, which will likely take place sometime this spring.
Earlier in the day Howard underwent an intense and withering cross-examination from Strafford County Assistant Attorney Joachim Barth as he poked holes in her narrative that she had fallen asleep for just a few seconds from when she turned left onto North Main Street till she stopped abruptly just after taking a right onto Twombly Street.
"You stopped on Twombly out of fear, panic about what you'd just done," Barth said.
"No," Howard cried out.
Assistant Attorney Emily Conant Garod continued that narrative in her closing argument as she pointed out if Howard had hit jogger Matt Lefebvre, then stopped her 2011 Hyundai Santa Fe, gotten out of the SUV and assisted him, there wouldn't have been charges.
But that wasn't what happened. Howard continued driving over Lefebvre. with the right rear tire rolling over Lefebvre's torso breaking his spine in three places.
"As he lay crumpled on the ground, she left him to die," Garod told the jury. "She stopped her car, so you know she felt it (the first collision)."
The incident that occurred a little before 6 a.m. on Oct. 11, 2021, also left Lefebvre with nine broken ribs, a broken sternum and clavicle, a punctured lung, nerve damage to his left side and a severe laceration that went from ear to ear on top of his head that took 25 staples to stop the bleeding.
Howard is facing up to 14 years in state prison on the charges.