OAKLAND — A threatening mob surrounding her car, and then a sound like a gunshot, prompted a law student to drive drunk with tragic results in 2013, the driver testified on Tuesday.

Meghan Zato, 28, testified on her own behalf about the night she hit and severely wounded pedestrian James Roda, 28, with her car in Oakland on 14th Street between Madison and Oak streets.

Wiping her eyes and nose and speaking in soft, low tones, Zato said she accidentally hit Roda moments after she decided she needed to get away from an angry crowd of men who minutes earlier had punched her in the face, stolen her phone and threatened to kill her. The crowd surrounded her, she said, because she had threatened to call police on a man who vandalized the main library and then assaulted her male friend when he made a comment about the graffiti.

Zato said she didn’t stop her car and led two people on a high-speed chase around Lake Merritt after hitting Roda early Oct. 5, 2013, because she thought one of the men chasing her was going to shoot her.

“They were going to kill me before. I just hit one of their friends, they definitely are going to kill me now,” Zato said she was thinking immediately after the collision.

Zato, of Oakland, was a first-semester student at UC Hastings College of Law at the time of the incident but now just works as a paralegal.

The prosecution alleges Zato intentionally hit Roda because she thought she was justified after being assaulted in front of the Oakland Public Library.

Deputy district attorney Adam Maldonado has painted Zato on the night in question as a belligerent menace who showed “aggressive and unrelenting behavior” before getting kicked out of The Ruby Room bar before the collision, and through her arrest.

During cross-examination Tuesday, Maldonado accused Zato of crying for the jury’s benefit and fabricating her account of that night he suggested she was too drunk to remember. He said she didn’t tell police that the collision was an accident and never once asked about Roda’s condition in the hours after she nearly killed him.

Maldonado played audio of Zato’s first statements to police that he said shows she felt justified in speeding down a crowded street and hitting Roda.

“Someone punched me in the face and this was self-defense,” Zato is heard telling arresting officers whom she verbally abused and threatened to sue.

“They got my phone. They punched me in the face and threatened me, what do you expect?” Zato said in another audio clip played for the jury. “Standing in front of me, what do you expect?”

Zato had a blood alcohol level of .16 — twice the legal limit — when she was tested two hours after hitting Roda, but an expert testified it could have been as high as .24 at the time of the collision. She testified she was in shock from being assaulted and didn’t want to drive, but a male friend in the car refused to call the police on her behalf and was screaming for her to get away from the crowd.

That friend did call police, but to report Zato, not the men who were chasing her, after jumping out of her turbo diesel Mercedes-Benz when it slowed or stopped at one point during the chase. He has not been called to testify.

Maldonado asked Zato repeatedly why, if she wanted to call the police on the men who robbed and assaulted her, didn’t she go back across the street to The Ruby Room or the nearby liquor store and have someone there call police.

Zato said she didn’t feel safe going back to The Ruby Room because the bar’s bouncer, whom she had insulted earlier, and others cheered on the men who attacked her.

Roda, of Oakland, was hospitalized for six months with serious brain injuries that will challenge him for the rest of his life. He’s now legally blind, suffers from seizures and has major memory problems. Since he suffered a seizure in the courtroom last week, he has been listening to trial testimony via a baby monitor from a witness waiting room.

Contact Malaika Fraley at 925-234-1684. Follow her at Twitter.com/malaikafraley.