WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — UPDATE, 6:30 p.m.:
A school bus crash killed a 6-year-old Warner Robins girl last year.
The driver was charged for the killing.
The case was set to go to trial Monday, but suddenly, that all changed.
A last-minute defense motion filed almost on the eve of the trial put the brakes on a case that's gripped Warner Robins for more than a year.
Her death shocked Warner Robins.
Just 6 years old, Arlana Haynes was killed when a Houston County school bus overturned in January 2018.
A year-and-a-half later, the newest twist in the case happened in Houston County superior court.
"It's a shock to everyone involved," said Haynes' mother's attorney for civil matters, David Dozier.
Last year, a grand jury indicted the bus driver, Shalita Harris, on four charges, including vehicular homicide.
This week, those charges were thrown out.
"We discovered that two of the charges could have been drawn more specifically, and they were not," said Chief Assistant District Attorney Erikka Williams.
In other words, part of the language in the original indictment was flawed.
After Harris' public defenders filed a motion calling attention to it and the prosecution conceded part of their indictment was "fatally defective," Judge Katherine Lumsden said she was forced to drop the charges.
Now, Williams says her office will have to fix the language and take the case back to a grand jury.
"If the grand jury indicts her, she will be re-arraigned on the charges and the case will go back on the trial calendar," said Williams.
As with any grand jury proceeding, though, there's no guarantee whether they'll decide to indict or not.
Dozier said the case reset was the latest in a long line of unwelcome news for the family.
"Their whole world's rocked," he said. "I mean, nothing's been the same ever since, and they're just sitting there, one more day of unknowing what's going to happen."
Teddy Reese, who represents Haynes' father, echoed that sentiment, but added his client wants "to see justice carried out" and is willing to wait to make sure the final decision in court is unimpeachable.
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A Houston County judge this week threw out charges against a former bus driver in the fatal accident that killed 6-year-old Parkwood Elementary student Arlana Haynes.
According to an order filed Thursday, Judge Katherine Lumsden wrote that Shalita Harris’ lawyer filed a late motion on Tuesday to throw out her indictment.
The judge wrote that the motion was filed 11 days past the deadline she’d set for pre-trial motions. In her order, Lumsden scolded the defense lawyer, calling the blown deadline ‘inexcusable.’
The late filing, she said, left no time to argue and decide that motion before the Monday, Aug. 19 trial date. Lumsden wrote that her only alternative was to drop the charges against Harris.
This means prosecutors will send the case back to a grand jury and restart the process from scratch.
Friday morning, Chief Assistant District Attorney Erikka Williams says after the defense filed their motion to quash, lawyers discovered problems with the language in two of the charges on the original indictment. Williams says they didn’t match existing statute closely enough.
The only way to fix it, she says, is to correct the language and take the newly written charges back to a grand jury. She said, it’s not uncommon for this to happen.
CASE HISTORY
Harris was charged with first degree vehicular homicide, reckless driving, driving too fast for conditions, and failure to maintain for the Jan. 2018 accident.
In that accident, Haynes was ejected from the bus being driven by Harris. She was taken to the hospital, but her injuries were too severe and she died a day later.
Harris was then arrested and later indicted in May 2018.
Court documents allege she took a turn too fast on Forest Park Drive, which led to the crash.
At the time of the crash, the Houston County Board of Education released a statement saying their "thoughts and prayers" were with Arlana's family and that the "accident (was) still under investigation."
However, despite repeated requests, they never allowed a reporter to interview board leadership about what happened and what their investigation revealed.
David Dozier, the attorney who represents Arlana's mother Angelica Rose, said in Jan. 2019 that a civil suit was filed against the school board and that the two parties had reached a tentative settlement pending some final legal maneuvering.
He wouldn't release the amount of the settlement but said although the suit had been tentatively resolved, not all of the parents' concerns had been fully addressed.
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