Woman Who Ran Granddaughter To Death Dead At 50

Joyce Hardin Garrard, the grandmother convicted of running her 9-year-old granddaughter to death in 2012, has herself died.

Garrard, 50, died Friday of a heart attack during a family jail visit. She was serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.

Garrard collapsed Sunday following a family visit and had been hospitalized this week, according to her son Robert’s attorney, Alan Jackson of Boaz. She was reportedly brain dead following a heart attack. Garrard was convicted last March of capital murder in the 2012 death of Savannah Hardin, her granddaughter. Prosecutors said Garrard ran the child for more than three hours one afternoon as punishment for lying about eating candy bars. Savannah died days later in a Birmingham hospital, apparently having never regained consciousness. h/t al

An Etowah County judge sentenced Garrard to life in prison without parole last May.