All-female jury decides fate of metro-east man who cut off girlfriend’s leg with truck

An all-female jury heard gripping testimony and saw gruesome photos before finding a metro-east man guilty of first-degree murder for chasing down his girlfriend in a truck, intentionally hitting her, cutting off her leg and leaving her to die on the side of a highway.

The Madison County jury deliberated only 40 minutes before reaching a verdict Thursday morning.

Lisa Dunnavant-Polach, 46, of Washington Park, bled to death on Feb. 21 after telling a witness and an emergency responder that the person responsible was her boyfriend, Richard Mayor, according to prosecutors at his trial this week at the Madison County Criminal Justice Center.

Assistant State’s Attorneys Luke Yager and Morgan Hudson told jurors that Dunnavant-Polach and Mayor were arguing and that he had threatened to harm her two weeks before.

“She was so afraid that she was willing to get into a random truck driver’s truck that she had never met before just to get out of the situation that the defendant had placed her in,” Yager said in his closing argument.

Jurors rejected Mayor’s claim that he wasn’t arguing with Dunnavant-Polach, that she was distraught and suicidal over issues with her children, that he was trying to calm her down and get her in his truck, and that he accidentally hit her when his foot got stuck under the brake pedal.

Mayor, 60, also of Washington Park, made a last-minute decision to testify on his own behalf, despite being warned by presiding Judge Kyle Napp that it would allow prosecutors to bring up his 1995 conviction for aggravated criminal sexual assault of a minor as a way to discredit him.

Mayor sobbed as he told jurors that he had to explain what really happened on Feb. 21 near Gateway Commerce Center Drive and Illinois 111 in Pontoon Beach, no matter the consequences.

“At no time did I plan on hurting Lisa,” he said. “She was my life. We were going to get married. All we had was each other.”

Mayor’s testimony prompted Napp to take the uncommon step of changing jury instructions to give the 12 women an option to convict Mayor of reckless homicide instead of first-degree murder, which involves intent to kill.

Penalties could range from probation to 10 years in prison for a reckless-homicide conviction, while murder carries a prison term of 20 to 60 years, the judge said.

Outside the jury’s presence, Napp told Mayor and prosecutors that she believed the law required her to provide the lesser charge as an option due to the defendant claiming that the hit-and-run was an accident.

Yager objected to the change, saying he believed the evidence clearly showed that Mayor was guilty of first-degree murder.

Yager later told jurors: “I know that you won’t be fooled by the fantastical story that the defendant told about some unlucky accident, that his foot gets stuck under the brake pedal, he magically swerves around the semi that he didn’t see and ... strikes Lisa and only Lisa.”

Truck driver stopped to help

Mayor’s two-and-a-half-day trial in Edwardsville was both dramatic and chaotic at times. He served as his own attorney, despite no law degree or legal training. Napp repeatedly admonished him for breaking courtroom rules and not following proper procedure.

Some of the most compelling testimony came from prosecution witnesses Stacy and Steven O’Dell, tractor-trailer drivers who had reported for work about 4 p.m. Feb. 21 at a warehouse on Gateway Commerce Center Drive.

Stacy O’Dell told jurors she was heading south on Illinois 111 in her tractor-trailer when she saw Mayor’s white Ford F-150 truck driving erratically, jumping curbs, crossing a median, stopping, starting and backing up in apparent pursuit of a woman on foot who looked frightened.

“It was mind-blowing,” she said.

O’Dell reportedly called her husband crying, and the former Marine and river captain agreed to check on the woman.

Steven O’Dell testified that he stopped his tractor in the southbound lane of Illinois 111 next to Dunnavant-Polach, who was “hiding” behind a tree in a grassy area between the highway’s shoulder and a moat full of freezing water around the Yazaki warehouse.

O’Dell said Dunnavant-Polach ran over and began climbing steps to get into the cab of his tractor when Mayor revved up his engine, sped toward her on the shoulder, hit her and nearly tore off the tractor’s passenger door.

O’Dell described his frantic search for something to use as a tourniquet for Dunnavan-Polach’s leg, which was essentially amputated, and ended up pulling a coiled CB radio cord out of his dashboard.

“She was coherent,” he said. “She was in a lot of pain. I said, ‘Ma’am, I need to stop your blood loss. You’re losing a lot of blood. I’m a Marine. Can I put (the tourniquet) on?’ And she said, ‘Yes. I have children. I’m not ready to die.’”

Prosecutors played O’Dell’s 911 call, which he reportedly made while pulling the tourniquet tight with his two hands and holding his cellphone between his jaw and shoulder.

During the call, O’Dell could be heard asking Dunnavant-Polach who was driving the white truck that struck her, and she responded, “Richard Mayor,” identifying him as her boyfriend and spelling out his last name.

Also testifying for the prosecution were Pontoon Beach, Madison County and Illinois State Police officers, forensic scientists, crime-scene investigators and the manager of the Yazaki warehouse.

Manager Jamie Johnson provided surveillance video that turned out to be a key piece of evidence because it captured the movements of Mayor and Dunnavant-Polach before and during the crash. Mayor argued that it was too distorted to show what really happened.

Ashley Dunnavant, Lisa Dunnavant-Polach’s daughter, testified that she had met Mayor only once during his one-and-a-half-year relationship with her mother but that they had talked on the phone.

Dunnavant said Mayor sent her a private Facebook message on Feb. 7 that read, “Your mom is out on the streets again, sorry,” and called her via video chat later that day, showing an image of him burning her mother’s clothes.

“He said if she (returned), he was going to send her back to the hospital unrecognizable,” Dunnavant told jurors.

Arguing couple or happy home?

Mayor also has used the names Richard Dennis Womack and Dennis R. Womack, according to his Madison County Probation Department criminal history, which notes that he’s a registered sex offender. He and Dunnavant-Polach lived in Washington Park with an East St. Louis mailing address.

In his testimony, Mayor admitted to jurors that he was convicted in 1995 of aggravated criminal sexual assault of a minor in Madison County and served 25 years of a 50-year prison sentence.

“I’ve been nothing but a model citizen since I got out,” he said.

Mayor testified that he worked as a forklift driver at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis, owned his own home and property, operated a towing business, regularly provided shelter to homeless people and otherwise helped them get back on their feet.

Mayor said he was working on Feb. 21, when he got a call indicating that Dunnavant-Polach, who had attempted suicide in the past, was distraught and intended to harm herself. He said he drove home, calmed her down and took her to work at the Menasha warehouse on Gateway Commerce Center Drive.

Mayor told jurors that he headed back to Menasha a few minutes later after realizing that Dunnavant-Polach had left her cellphone in his truck, that he saw her walking and determined she was still upset and crying.

The alleged pursuit on the surveillance video, according to Mayor’s testimony, was actually his attempt to convince Dunnavant-Polach to get in his truck and keep her from getting hurt.

Mayor said he was looking down at his dashboard, trying to find one of her favorite stations on the radio, when his large shoe got stuck under the brake pedal and the truck accelerated, running over Dunnavant-Polach.

“It was an accident,” he said. “... There was nothing I could do. I didn’t mean to kill Lisa. ... I would give my life up right now if she could come back, but it doesn’t work that way.”

Mayor also testified that:

• He was rendered “unconscious” by the trauma of the crash and didn’t remember driving 4 miles to an area where he pulled over his disabled truck, whose shredded left-front tire had fallen off.

• He was dazed and confused while walking through a residential neighborhood, where a Pontoon Beach police officer stopped him and where Steven O’Dell later was brought to identify him, and that he never tried to run or hide.

• Blood-sugar issues related to his diabetes had contributed to his unclear state of mind, which was illustrated by the fact that he couldn’t remember his own address when questioned by officers on the street.

Police called for medical personnel after Mayor told him that he was diabetic, according to body-cam video. A paramedic determined that his blood-sugar level wasn’t out of the normal range.

Mayor pleaded with jurors to find him guilty of reckless homicide instead of first-degree murder, arguing that he loved Dunnavant-Polach and he wouldn’t have done anything to hurt her or land himself back in prison.

“Why would I give up everything that I have?” he asked. “I’ve got a good life.”

Family and friends testified

Mayor’s witnesses included his grandson, Kaitrell Stevenson, who had spent a weekend at his house earlier in February for a birthday celebration and described the atmosphere as happy and “full of joy.”

Two of Mayor’s lifelong friends also took the stand, testifying that he and Dunnavant-Polach were in love, not prone to arguments and planning to get married March 31.

One of the friends, Pam Wallace, walked out of the courtroom crying after jurors handed down the guilty verdict, along with Stevenson and Mayor’s daughter, Bonita Womack, who also had tears in their eyes.

“I can’t believe they’re doing this to him,” said Wallace, 59, of Alton, formerly of Granite City, where Mayor and Dunnavant-Polach grew up. “He was trying to help her. He wouldn’t have left work if he didn’t think she was going to kill herself. I know 100% that he didn’t (run over her) intentionally.”

Mayor was arrested in February and indicted by a grand jury in March.

Mayor represented himself throughout the trial, which started with jury selection on Tuesday morning. In his pro-se motion on March 17, he wrote that he couldn’t afford a private attorney and didn’t trust a public defender to be experienced enough to handle a murder case.

Mayor sat alone at the defense table. He listened intently to testimony, sorted through a file folder full of legal papers, sipped bottled water and often looked toward the jury. He wore a suit and tie.

Judge Napp stopped proceedings several times to tell Mayor that he wasn’t following proper legal procedure. At one point, when she sustained an objection by Yager, Mayor shook his head and muttered under his breath, “Well, I can see how this is going to go.”

That prompted Napp to send the jury out of the courtroom temporarily and warn Mayor that any more unprofessional conduct would result in a contempt-of-court charge.

The judge reminded Mayor that she had strongly recommended at an earlier hearing that he allow himself to be represented by an attorney who knew how to present evidence.

“Simply because you’ve watched lawyers on TV, that doesn’t make you a lawyer,” she said.

Napp is expected to sentence Mayor on a later date to be determined, according to Brian Brueggemann, spokesman for the office of Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Haine.

Mayor is eligible for an extended sentence of 60 to 100 years in prison, he said.

“We highly commend the fellow motorists and emergency responders who heroically tried to help Lisa Dunnavant-Polach and save her life,” Haine stated in a press release Thursday afternoon.

“These Good Samaritans continued to do the right thing, by having the courage to come to court and tell the jury what the victim could not: that it was Richard Mayor who mowed her down, and that she did not want to die.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify that Mayor and Dunnavant-Polach lived in Washington Park with an East St. Louis mailing address, which was used in court records.