The ex-boyfriend of a woman who hit a homeless man, drove home with his body through her windshield and then left him alive in her garage told a Fort Worth, Texas, jury Tuesday about disposing of the man's body in a local park.

A panicked Chante Mallard, 27, sought help after running over a man on her way home from a nightclub, testified Clete Jackson, who is serving a 10-year sentence for disposing of the body of the victim, Gregory Biggs.

Jackson took the stand as part of a plea deal in which he admitted to tampering with evidence. The deal also included a promise by prosecutors not to charge Jackson's new wife for allegedly lying to investigators.

Mallard enters the courtroom Tuesday.

Sarcastic at times, somber at others, Jackson's narrative of the early hours of Oct. 26, 2001, seemed to support the defense's contention that an intoxicated and hysterical Mallard panicked.

Jackson, who had previously dated Mallard,  met up with her at Joe's Bamboo Club in Fort Worth. At the club, he said  he saw another friend, Titilisee Fry, supply Mallard with the drug Ecstasy. He also smoked marijuana with Mallard. At about 1 a.m., Jackson left with another woman he met in the club, he said.

Discovering that Mallard had left more than 20 voice mail messages for him throughout the early morning, Jackson returned the calls and agreed to meet Mallard and Fry. At first, Mallard was so distraught that she couldn't or wouldn't tell him what happened, he said.

"She said she messed up real bad," Jackson testified.

Eventually Mallard admitted having had an auto accident, but didn't mention anything about Biggs.

When Jackson went to Mallard's garage to see the damage to her 1997 Chevy Cavalier, he noticed only the smashed windshield and a dent in the top of the car. Not until he went to open the door did Mallard cry out, "I hit somebody, he's still in the car," Jackson testified.

Calling Biggs "the dude," Jackson believed the victim was dead by the time he saw the body.

"If I could have given him blood I would have. He was already deceased," he testified. "None of us stopped to think what if. We were scared, we panicked."

Recently released from prison, Jackson said he feared getting in trouble and decided to help Mallard dispose of the body so that he would not have to go to the police.

"I finally got my life back to be a father to my kids," Jackson testified. "I knew she got me in trouble."

Though testifying for the state, Jackson seemed to bolster defense claims that the incident was an accident, not murder.

"If she shot somebody and called me, I knew it would be on purpose. If she stabbed somebody and called me, I knew it would be on purpose," he testified. "You don't hit nobody on purpose. She panicked. I knew it was an accident."

Jackson testified that Mallard said she had unsuccessfully tried to remove Biggs from the windshield immediately after hitting him and even broke the glass with her arm. He said Mallard acknowledged knowing that Biggs was alive when she pulled into her garage.

The victim, Gregory Biggs

Fry testified Monday that she had urged Mallard to call 911, but the defendant refused.

Jackson testified that Fry  had suggested that Biggs' corpse be burned so that it would not be found. That idea didn't sit well with Jackson, who said he told her, "We ain't going to burn no body. We're just going to leave him somewhere so they can bury him because it was an accident."

Jackson contacted his cousin, Herbert Tyrone Cleveland, and the two men wrapped Biggs' body in a blanket, drove to Fort Worth's Cobb Park and unloaded the corpse onto the ground. Mallard accompanied them, Jackson testified, and even handed a knife to Cleveland to cut the blanket Biggs was wrapped in.  

Cleveland also cut a deal with prosecutors for tampering with evidence and is serving a nine-year term. He is expected to testify as well.

Experts testifying earlier Tuesday agreed that Biggs would have survived had he received proper medical attention.

"There's not a member of the Fort Worth Fire Department that could not have saved Mr. Biggs' life," testified Capt. Jim Sowder.

Sowder talked about what emergency medical personnel call the "golden hour" — the 60 or so minutes following a trauma that could make or break a victim's chance of survival. "Mr. Biggs' injuries were not life-threatening if they were treated early on after the causation of the accident," he told the jury.

An emergency medicine doctor affirmed that testimony.

 "His injuries were limited to his extremities," said Dr. Raymond Swienton, an emergency medicine physician University of Texas' Southwestern Medical Center.

Biggs broke an arm, his right leg in two places and nearly amputated his lower left leg, according to Swienton, who said there was no way to assess whether doctors would have been able to save his leg had Biggs received aid. 

According to the autopsy, Biggs' suffered no internal injuries from the crash but bled to death. The jury, however, won't hear about the autopsy until the medical examiner takes the stand. 

Testimony resumes Wednesday and is being broadcast live on Court TV.