Woman accused her neighbour and his wife of being paedophiles on social media before she allegedly ran him down with her car

A woman has been found not guilty of deliberately hitting her neighbor with a car after a jury agreed she believed it was her only way to avoid death.

Zoe Anne Gooding was found not guilty in the Townsville District Court in Queensland on Thursday of one charge of ‘malicious intent to cause serious harm’ and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle.

Ms Gooding was accused of intending to cause ‘serious harm’ to her neighbour, Michael Usher, when she struck him with her car on Holbourne Street in Bushland Beach in June 2022.

The neighbors were originally friends and had invited each other over for Christmas in the past, but that changed when Ms Gooding accused Mr Usher and his wife of being pedophiles on social media in September 2021.

Ms Gooding has never denied hitting Mr Usher with her car, but claimed she was terrified for her life when he and another man ran towards her on the night of June 17.

Crown prosecutor Thomasina Papadimitriou told the jury the incident was deliberate and “the culmination of an ugly neighborhood dispute.”

However, Ms Gooding’s lawyer, Darin Honchin, said his client’s actions were fitting because she “thought she was going to be killed.”

A jury of five men and seven women found Ms Gooding not guilty of both charges and she was seen being pushed out of the courthouse in a wheelchair after the verdict was read.

Mr Honchin said Ms Gooding was ‘fearing for her life’ because she believed Mr Usher approached her car to make her ‘responsible for everything he thought she had done’.

“This was an area beset by a host of problems, but that night Ms Gooding was aggressively approached by two men in the dark,” Mr Honchin told the jury. reports the Townsville Bulletin.

Ms Gooding had accused Mr Usher of previously making loud noises outside her home and looking through her windows.

But Usher, who had already successfully sued Mrs Gooding for defamation after she spread a rumor that he and his wife were trying to nurse her six-year-old daughter, recalled a very different version of the events that led to him approaching the car.

Ms Papadimitriou said Mr Usher had been watching football with his friends when they heard Ms Gooding leave her house and sat in her car before revving the engine.

The court was told Mr Usher and a friend went outside to allegedly try to confiscate her car keys to stop the disturbance.

As they tried to get her to turn off the engine, a man kicked Ms Gooding’s car, causing her to abruptly reverse out of the driveway and hit Mr Usher for the first time.

Mr Usher fell and hit his head when Ms Gooding allegedly drove to the end of the cul-de-sac without turning on her lights and parked facing the street.

When the men caught up with her, she drove straight at Mr Usher, who was standing three to five meters away, hitting him directly and sending him over the bonnet as she drove away.

Mr Honchin said Ms Gooding feared for her safety because the men were much larger than her and she believed they were only following her to kill her.

‘She drove away, they followed her and came at her again. They walked together towards her car and then she felt anxious, scared for her life and accelerated away and she hit him in the process,” he said.

The blow broke Mr Usher’s rotator cuff twice, requiring surgery, caused an abrasion to his skull and broke three of his ribs.

Ms Papadimitriou told the court she doubted how scared Ms Gooding really was during the incident.

“Was she really scared when she hit Mr. Usher at the end of the cul-de-sac, or is she a woman who gets angry when things don’t go her way? Did she want to hurt the man she hated, had an ongoing feud with, a man she honestly had enough with that night,” she said in her closing statement.

Ms Papadimitriou said Ms Gooding planned to hit Mr Usher with her car because she was at a “boiling point”.

Ms Gooding “wanted to hurt him”, Ms Papadimitriou told the court.

On the second day of the trial, Ms Gooding’s triple-0 call from after the incident was played in court and she could be heard crying hysterically during the call.

She told the emergency worker that Mr Usher and his friend had approached her before she tried to hit them with her car.

Ms Gooding never denied hitting Mr Usher, but said she did not remember it clearly because she had ‘blacked out’ at the time.

During the triple-0 call, Ms Gooding said she could not remember exactly what had happened, other than that Mr Usher had run towards her and she in turn had punched him.

‘…they were making too much noise, I just blacked out. I’ve never been so scared and angry at the same time,” she said during the phone call.

Ms Papadimitriou said there was no medical evidence to explain why this had happened.

The Crown also questioned Mrs. Gooding’s authenticity based on the fact that a police investigation into her claim that Mr Usher and his wife were pedophiles had led to no charges or arrests.

Judge Jennifer Rosengren adjourned the case on Wednesday and the jury took less than a day for its deliberations, which found Ms Gooding innocent.