Man sentenced in tractor attack

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

Jeffrey Calvin Turpin’s sentence has been set, but his victim’s pain lingers.
On Wednesday afternoon in Wythe County Circuit Court, Turpin avoided jail time with a plea of no contest to an unlawful wounding charge resulting from an altercation in August 2006 where Turpin attacked a Wytheville woman with a tractor.
Prosecutors initially charged Turpin with aggravated malicious wounding, a felony which carries a minimum 20 year prison sentence. The unlawful wounding charge also is classified as a felony, but carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment.
Judge Josiah T. Showalter Jr. sentenced Turpin, of Max Meadows, to three years in prison for the unlawful wounding charge per his plea agreement, and suspended all three years.
Turpin, 42, will be on probation for three years during which he will have to pay restitution to his victim, Robyn Babos of Wytheville, and avoid contact with her.
“We’re not contesting the commonwealth’s evidence,” said defense lawyer Marc LeBlanc after the hearing. “The commonwealth was very, very gracious in working this out with us.”
Babos was not as pleased with agreement. In a phone interview Thursday morning, she said she had hoped Turpin’s charge wouldn’t be lowered to unlawful wounding.
“Who in their right mind gets run over by a front-loader anyway?” she said. “I didn’t think that he was going to get off that easy,”
Although she wished Turpin was in jail, she added that she told prosecutors that she just wanted the ordeal to be complete.
“I really didn’t want to go through the whole testifying thing,” she said.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Gerald Mabe did not return two phone messages by press time seeking further details on the plea deal.
The amended indictment from aggravated malicious wounding to unlawful wounding was first introduced in court Wednesday. Babos said she found out that the plea agreement lowered the charge to the lesser felony when she called Circuit Court on Wednesday morning.
“I just can’t believe he got off with unlawful wounding,” she said.
Babos said by phone Thursday that she and Turpin were acquaintances of a few months when the incident occurred. She said she went with her cousin Samuel Wade Hagee late in the evening on Aug. 26 to test drive a truck Turpin had told her was for sale.
When they returned from the test drive, Babos said, Turpin became angry and used the tractor to ram the truck into a wet, swampy area. Babos was able to jump out of the truck, but she had to go back to retrieve her purse.
After Babos got her belongings, she said Turpin came after her in the tractor as she was walking.
“It was a huge, enormous tractor,” she said. “I was yelling and screaming bloody murder.”
Babos said multiple factors contributed to her being unable to run away from the machine. She said she suffers from a brain tumor in her cerebellum, which affects her balance. She also added that her boots and Levi’s jeans were wet from retrieving her purse, further bogging her down as she tried to run.
Most disorienting, though, Babos said, was the blinding headlights of the tractor. She said that as tried to run away, she repeatedly looked back at the oncoming tractor.
“It was like getting blinded like a deer,” she said.
Eventually Babos said she tripped and fell and Turpin dropped the front bucket of the tractor on her left leg, opening up a gash and fracturing the bone.
In the months after the incident, Babos said she developed an infection in the injured leg.
“It was one antibiotic after the next,” she said.
Now more than a year after the attack, Babos still struggles with her injuries. She said she walks with a limp and has nerve damage in her leg and lower back.
But the mental anguish has been even worse.
“I still can hear that metal scrapping along the ground,” she said.
On Wednesday, Turpin also pleaded guilty to destruction of property and unauthorized use charges that came from an incident unrelated to the tractor attack. Two other unauthorized use charges were also dropped as part of the plea agreement.
He received one year of prison time each for the two other charges, but both sentences were also suspended.
LeBlanc said Turpin spent about two weeks in jail after his Aug. 27 arrest for the tractor incident.
Babos said she is reminded of that horrible August night each morning.
“I still have major pain,” she said. “I lift my leg up with my hands to put it in my pants.”
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .