Walhallan to atone for act of reckless homcide

A Walhalla man has been sent to prison for about eight years and three-quarter months after pleading guilty to reckless homicide—an incident that took the life of a 71-year old woman. Six years of the sentence handed down to Thomas James Kirby amount to prison time, with the balance to be spent in home incarceration. General Sessions Judge McIntosh today rejected a plea by defense lawyer Kayla Porter to spare her client from prison. However, the judge was told that an emergency room doctor had advised Kirby to not drive any kind of motorized vehicle because he suffers from seizures. And it was a seizure, Kirby claimed, that preceded his driving a car into a second vehicle that waited for a light change in the Bountyland traffic intersection. The accident, May 21, 2018, killed Linda Roose, who was a front seat passenger in a car driven by her husband, John Roose. Mr. Roose was injured in the accident. Assistant solicitor Blair Stoudemire quoted another highway 28 driver as saying that moments before the fatal crash, Kirby’s car accelerated past her’s, then swerved in front of her car, before striking the Roose vehicle. Kirby turned toward Mr. Roose and other family members in the coutroom and apologized, saying that he wishes he had been the one killed instead of Mrs. Roose. The couple was on their way to a friend’s home to pick up a walker that Mrs. Roose would have used to help recuperate from a planned surgery. In the accident, Mr. Roose remembered a crashing sound, then darkness, only to be told later in the hospital that his wife of 52 years was dead.