It took less than an hour of deliberations Monday afternoon before a jury found Kendall Batchelor guilty of intoxication manslaughter.
The trial of Batchelor, 23, who is the daughter of luxury auto dealer Ken Batchelor, next moved into the sentencing phase.
Batchelor was charged with the second-degree felony after being accused of driving a large pickup truck into oncoming traffic on Texas 46 on June 2, hitting and killing 48-year-old David John Belter, a longtime Boerne resident. Following her conviction after four days of proceedings, Kendall County prosecutors Gretchen Flader and Manuel Cardenas introduced 500 images and hours of video footage, as well as dozens of witnesses, detailing Batchelor’s checkered past both locally and in other counties.
Testimony and evidence presented by the state has included allegations over several years involving narcotics, alcohol intoxication and traffic stops, including a dire prediction from one officer in 2016.
“(Department of Public Safety) Trooper (Allan) Meyer warned her if you continue to go down this road, if you continue to go down this path, you’re going to kill somebody,” Cardenas said in his opening statements Monday afternoon. “Those words were so prophetic because six years after, Trooper Meyer is working a … scene where she killed David Belter.”
Batchelor took the stand May 17, the same day the prosecution rested its case before 451st state District Court Judge Kristen Cohoon.
When the assistant district attorneys asked Batchelor if she was intoxicated while driving down the state highway in her truck June 2 or when she missed her turn, she simply replied, “Yes.”
She is now facing two to 20 years in state prison following the guilty verdict.
Because the jury also found her truck to have been used as a deadly weapon, she will be required to serve at least half of whatever term is handed down.
During the first two days of testimony to determine Batchelor’s future behind bars, the prosecutors showed dash and body cam footage from several interactions she had with law enforcement over the years.
In all, it was shown Batchelor received several minor in possession charges, driving while intoxicated charges and failed more than one field sobriety test.
According to evidence, when she was just 15, Batchelor was cited for possession of alcohol as a minor after being questioned when she got off a boat with her then-boyfriend in Horseshoe Bay.
In 2016, Meyer first crossed paths with Batchelor after he spotted her racing and driving recklessly down 46. He was in his personal vehicle when he attempted to stop Batchelor and a friend, but the teen – whose lifted truck had pink wheels and a vanity license plate – sped away.
“I don’t usually get involved when off-duty because it becomes a lot of trouble,” Meyer testified. “But because it was so dangerous, I had to do something.”
It wasn’t until several days later that Meyer would come into contact with Batchelor again after the same vehicle was reported driving erratically at Boerne Lake.
When he arrived at the traffic stop to talk to the driver, he met Batchelor with the hope of setting her on a better path.
“In my experience, I’ve had a lot of contact with teenage drivers in the past,” Meyer said in court. “A few times, they ended up badly. … So, I try to be proactive. Even if just to chew them out, sometimes it’s enough to tell them, ‘You need to stop.’” Although she at first tried to deny she had alcohol in the truck while skipping school that day, Meyer eventually got the information from her, the trooper testified.
Prosecutors pulled up a photo of seven bottles of liquor pulled from various areas of Batchelor’s pickup displayed on the hood of Meyer’s patrol vehicle.
The law officer indicated he tried to scare her straight.
“The next thing we’re going to see is you flipped over in a ditch somewhere or you run someone over,” Meyer warned Batchelor that day in March 2016. “You’re going to kill someone else on the road or end up in a ditch somewhere. It’s a pattern, and it never fails.”
Batchelor, who admitted in Meyer’s body-cam footage to having taken a sip of alcohol before school that morning, was cited as a minor in possession of alcohol, and her father was called to pick her up.
Two years later, Batchelor would be charged with driving while intoxicated – blowing a more than .2% blood-alcohol level at the Kendall County Sheriff’s Office – after she drove back from a concert in Luckenbach. The legal limit is .08%.
The sentencing phase of Batchelor’s trial is set to continue through Friday, with Cohoon hoping to give the jury — which includes seven men and five women, with two men and two women as alternates — the full day to deliberate the defendant’s sentence.
Prosecutors said they are seeking the maximum penalty — two decades behind bars.
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