CARROLL COUNTY, GA — A Carroll County jury is hearing the case in the vehicular manslaughter retrial of former Georgia State Trooper Anthony “AJ” Scott, now the mayor of Buchanan, nearly a decade after the crash.
Scott is charged in the 2015 high-speed collision that killed 16-year-old Isabella Chinchilla and 17-year-old Kylie Lindsey and seriously injured two others. Prosecutors say Scott was driving nearly 90 miles per hour without lights or sirens on Highway 27 when his patrol car slammed into the teens’ vehicle.
Scott testified as the final defense witness, saying he was not responding to a call at the time of the crash. The defense rested after his testimony. Scott’s defense attorney acknowledged the deaths of Lindsey and Chinchilla as “an absolute tragedy,” but sought to raise doubt about what caused the accident.
Prosecutors argued that the defense was trying to get jurors to focus on everything except Scott.
This is Scott’s second trial in the case. His first ended in a mistrial after prosecutors failed to disclose key evidence regarding where one of the teens may have been sitting in the car.
Late Tuesday, jurors asked to review videos from the case as they began deliberations.