“She was jumping around the parking lot screaming,” Karlyn Sizemore said Monday, recalling seeing Herring shoot Lara Sobel, 48, of East Montpelier, outside Barre City Place on Aug. 7, 2015.
Assistant Attorney General Evan Meenan asked Sizemore if she could make out the words Herring was saying. “They didn’t listen to me. … Everybody got what they deserved,” Sizemore recalled Herring blaring at the “top of her lungs.”
Sizemore was the first witness Monday morning in Washington Superior Court at Herring’s sentencing hearing on four murder convictions. The hearing is expected to continue Tuesday, with victim impact statements tentatively set for Wednesday. Judge John Pacht may also hand down the sentence that day.
Prosecutors called four witnesses to the stand Monday before resting their case, adding they had also submitted a slew of exhibits for the judge to consider.
Attorney David Sleigh, representing Herring, called several of his client’s family members to the stand Monday afternoon to talk about the trauma she suffered as a child and later over losing custody of her three children, the last and youngest one shortly before the fatal shootings.
According to police, Herring was upset over efforts to terminate her parental rights to her youngest daughter at the time she shot and killed three relatives she believed provided information about her to the state. She then gunned down Sobel, a social worker for the Department for Children and Families who oversaw her case.
Herring, 43, pleaded guilty in July to three counts of second-degree murder in the killings of three relatives: her cousins Rhonda Herring and Regina Herring, as well as her aunt Julie Falzarano, at their Berlin home.
She also pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for killing Sobel in the parking lot of the social worker’s office in downtown Barre.
As part of a plea deal, Herring has avoided a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, though that sentence could still be imposed. That is what prosecutors are seeking. Her attorney said he is requesting “something less.”
Herring had her hands and feet shackled throughout Monday’s hearing, the chains clanking each time she walked into and out of the courtroom. She appeared to listen intently to the witnesses testifying about 25 feet from her. She made little eye contact with the people behind her who filled the courtroom.
Sizemore, the first witness, said that late in the afternoon on the day of the killings she went to Barre City Place, where she worked as a cleaner. In the parking lot, Sizemore said, she heard and saw Herring in a parked car, screaming.
Sizemore said she turned to her son, who was with her, and said, “There’s a crazy bitch.”
After hearing a gunshot, Sizemore said, she saw Herring “charging through the parking lot” toward Sobel, and a second shot rang out.
Sizemore said she tried to call 911 and people were rushing to offer aid to the wounded Sobel. Herring laid the gun on the ground, Sizemore added, and did not try to flee or shoot anybody else. Police arrived and handcuffed Herring, Sizemore testified.
Jacob Graves, another witness, testified Monday that he had just gotten out of work nearby late on the afternoon of Aug. 7, 2015, when he approached the parking lot behind Barre City Place and heard Herring screaming.
Asked if he heard Herring’s words, Graves responded, “Just bits and pieces.”
Henry Premont, of Williamstown, testified that Herring, with whom he had had a relationship, took the Remington rifle from his home that police say she used to shoot her relatives and Sobel.
Herring had previously lived with Premont for about three weeks, he said, before she moved out. Asked why Herring moved out, Premont responded, “She drank a lot and was kind of unpredictable on her whereabouts.”
He said Herring knew how to get into his residence. It was as easy, Premont said, as rattling the door.
Premont, who said he went target shooting with Herring about three times, called her adept with a firearm and a “really good shot.”
He described Herring as angry about the custody case involving her 9-year-old daughter, remembering her saying, “Someone is going to pay” and “There’s going to be an Armageddon.”
Tiffany Herring-Flint, Rhonda Herring’s daughter, recalled that prior to the shootings she was at her mother’s home in Berlin when she woke up to a phone call and heard Jody Herring leaving a message.
Herring-Flint said, “I heard Jody Herring saying, ‘Rhonda, Regina, you might want to … stop calling DCF or I’m going to come shoot your brains out.’”
The day after Sobel’s shooting, Herring-Flint said, she couldn’t reach her mother by phone despite numerous attempts.
She testified Monday that she and a friend went to the Berlin residence. Inside she found her mother and grandmother dead and called police. Officers discovered Regina Herring had also been killed inside the home.
After prosecutors said they were finished presenting their witnesses Monday, Sleigh called several of Jody Herring’s relatives to the stand, including her mother and two aunts.
The aunts talked of mental, physical and sexual abuse they and other siblings suffered while growing up. They also spoke of the death of Jody Herring’s father, disputing the conclusion that it was a suicide.
Janella Herring, Jody Herring’s mother, said she didn’t buy that her late husband’s death was a suicide, either. She said his body was found with a gun in his right hand, but he was left-handed.
His death was a blow to Jody Herring, then 5, the family members testified, describing the relationship between father and daughter as “particularly close.”
They said Jody Herring after her father’s death began to have seizures with greater frequency and often could be seen looking “off into space.”
The family members described Jody Herring as having been a “happy-go-lucky” kid before her father’s death who acted like she had no cares in the world. One of her aunts called her “a sweet little thing.”
