Detroit EMT Describes Box-Cutter Attack

Dec. 01--A Detroit EMT testified today that the nightmarish night a Detroit man slashed her and her partner with a box cutter seemed to last "forever."

Kelly Adams used a step stool to try to fend off Michael Montgomery Oct. 20 as he attacked her and her partner Alfredo Rojas, she testified.

When the attack was over "I had arteries cut in my face," Adams testified, her chin and her jawline covered by what resembled a surgical mask. And Rojas "had arteries cut in his hand."

After Adams testified, 36th District Judge Lydia Nance Adams ruled Montgomery, 30, of Detroit will proceed to trial on charges including two counts of assault with intent to murder.

Adams and Rojas went to Third Street near Martin Luther King in Detroit's Midtown after midnight on a call of a woman with an injured ankle.

After she told Montgomery he wasn't allowed in the ambulance with his girlfriend he began swearing at the EMTs, punched Rojas in the head and Rojas hit Montgomery back, she testified.

She yelled at Montgomery to stop, Adams said. When he reached into his pocket, she grabbed a step stool out of the ambulance.

Adams turned around and saw Rojas had been stabbed in the hand and was bleeding.

Montgomery swung the box cutter in his hand -- and that's when Adams said she hit Montgomery with the stool, twice.

"He didn't even acknowledge that I hit him," Adams testified. "It was like I didn't faze him."

Montgomery went after Rojas again and cut him under the eye, she said. Adams hit Montgomery with the stool again, and he turned and punched her hard on the left side of the face, she testified.

"It stunned me," she said. "I bent over."

When she came back up, Montgomery sliced her face from the ear down with the box cutter, leaving her bleeding profusely, Adams said.

Both EMTs were treated and later released from the hospital. Since the attack, Adams said, she has undergone surgeries, has paralysis on the left side of her face and her eye doesn't close.

Montgomery has also been charged in two cold cases. He was ordered to trial today in the sexual assault and murder of 16-year-old Dantoya White, who was stabbed in the neck and found in an alley naked from the waist down on Jan. 1, 2006.

In the that case, Kelly Johnson testified today that while walking in an alley the evening of Dec. 30, 2005, she saw a woman walking in front of a man. He had his hand over her mouth and her eyes were big, she said.

It scared Johnson, who was 16 at the time, and she took a different route home.

"It just frightened me to see that in the alley," she said.

On Jan. 1, White was discovered with blood all around her body and on her face.

There was a piece of wood on her chest, Detroit police officer Eric Carter testified.

Montgomery's attorney, Wyatt Harris, argued there wasn't evidence that his client committed the White homicide. Montgomery wore green jail garb and remained silent during the preliminary examinations today.

Authorities said they connected him to White's case and another that happened less than two weeks earlier through DNA matching.

In that earlier case, Montgomery is accused of kidnapping, torturing and sexually assaulting a 33-year-old woman in an alley in the 8600 block of Auburn in Detroit on Dec. 23, 2005.

The preliminary examination in that case is scheduled for Tuesday at 11 a.m. in the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice.

Contact Elisha Anderson: eanderson@freepress.com or 313-222-5144. Follow her on Twitter @elishaanderson.

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