'McMissile' Moment Lands Mom in Jail

Hall, whose family was driving from North Carolina to New York for a family party, saw the situation differently. She said she had never driven that route and was trying to keep up with her father's truck when Ballin cut in front of her the second time, causing her to swerve onto the shoulder. She said she was worried because her sister's bulging belly almost slammed into the dashboard.

Hall's next move was wrong, she said, but she felt provoked.

"It was past me ignoring him. I'm not going to lie; I was cursing him," she said. "I took the McDonald's cup. I tossed it over my car."

She never fathomed that it would land her in jail for the first time in her life, wearing a standard-issue jumpsuit frayed up both legs and learning to curl her hair using toilet paper. Not even when she saw Ballin talking to the state trooper up the highway, or when she was arrested and released on her own recognizance, or even when a trial date was set for Jan. 3.

Even when Ballin testified, Hall said, "I'm thinking about what I'm going to cook when I get home."

"I passed out when they said guilty, two years," she added. "I became a convicted felon."

Fowle stands by the couple's decision to report the crime but concedes that even she and Ballin were surprised at the conviction.

"I think that this is way too much of a punishment for her actions. This is just to me absolutely ridiculous," Fowle said. Community service would have made more sense, she said. "It's something that's going to make someone realize I did screw up, and I'm going to remember this, and I'm not going to do something like this again."

Hall's attorney, public defender Terence Patton, did not return calls for comment. Nor did Commonwealth's Attorney Daniel M. Chichester or Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney George Elsasser, who handled the case.

Elsasser argued in court that had Ballin been hit by the drink, he might have gotten into a serious accident with injuries. Hall also was found guilty of reckless driving, assault against Ballin and assault and battery against Fowle. For her conviction on those charges, the jury recommended she be fined $1,000.

According to court documents, Hall is unemployed and, with her husband's salary, the couple takes in $30,384 a year. She receives $388 a month in food stamps.

"It doesn't seem right for her not to be around," said Porter, who is watching one of Hall's three children, ages 4, 6 and 8. The younger two are with their grandparents. "We just hope that whatever they do, don't let them keep her. Without her, I don't know what I'll do."

Hall said she has cried every day she has spent locked up and wakes most days to find clumps of hair on her pillow from the stress. She shares a cell with two other women and spends 19 hours a day in the cell, she said.

When Hall talks about the incident, she sometimes jokes about how she will only fly over Virginia from now on and says other inmates sometimes throw things in her direction and say, "Watch out McMissile."

But in other moments, when she talks about the reality of a felony conviction, her expression goes blank. She was supposed to start nursing school the day after she was sent to jail, and she wonders what job she will be able to get once potential employers do a background check.

"Now people are going to see me as an angry, road rage, convicted felon. And it really upsets me," she said. "I must have been wrong . . . but seriously, God. Lesson learned. Lesson learned is one hour in this place."