3/3/2009
ERIN MATHEWS
After hearing nearly four days of testimony, it took jurors only about half an hour to agree that Darren E. Jones was not guilty of aggravated battery. “It’s been a hard seven months,” Jones said Tuesday of the time he has awaited trial in Saline County District Court, having been accused of intentionally hitting a striking Hawker Beechcraft worker with his Jeep on Aug. 11. Jones was returning to work that day after a week’s vacation — for the first time since the strike began. He told the jury that he would never intentionally hit anyone with his vehicle. If he had hit someone with his Jeep, Jones said, he would have stopped and made sure the person was OK — even if he was surrounded by angry strikers. That is not what happened on Aug. 11, Jones said, when Steve Wisbey came in contact with his vehicle in the entrance of the airplane assembly hangar. “He shoved off, pushed off, my vehicle, shuffled a few steps backward and fell to the ground,” Jones told the jury.
Read the rest of the story in Wednesday's Salina Journal.