Former teacher Tammy Lowe now awaits her sentence for killing a child during a hit-and-run crash last January.
A jury found the 54-year-old guilty of manslaughter using a deadly weapon Thursday. Six-year-old John Paul Raidy was fatally struck while crossing the street on the 1100 block of North Carrier Parkway on Jan. 24, 2013.
"All of a sudden, a child ran out. All I saw was a small figure and," Tammy Lowe testified, having difficulty keeping her composure while answering the lawyers' questions.
In her own words, Lowe explained her perspective of what happened moments after she hit the first grader.
"I completely panicked. I had a panic attack. I had no rational thought of what to do except that if I didn't flee I was going to die," she said.
The former middle school teacher said she couldn't sleep since that night and has been waiting to apologize to Raidy's family.
"I would get back in a second or trade places in a second if I could. Desperately I wanted to," she said tearfully.
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But Raidy's parents had no compassion for the woman convicted of killing their son.
"It's been miserable. I have this pain and this hole that just won't go away," said his mother Lauren Raidy.
The boy's father also spoke out for the first time this week, addressing the jury about his struggle to cope with his son's death for the past year-and-a-half.
"It's a piece of you that is gone. People look at you like you're broken, and they want to help repair you. But you can't be repaired. It can't be fixed. It's a part of you that can never come back," said Andrew Ellis.
Lauren Raidy asked the jury to not give any leniency to Tammy Lowe.
"Nothing is going to bring my John back. But she did what she did, and she needs to pay for it," she said.
