Man takes stand in murder trial, says he stabbed friend in self-defense

The Columbus man on trial for murder for fatally stabbing a close friend on New Year’s Day 2015 took the witness stand Wednesday to say he acted in defense of himself and his then-girlfriend, whom he since married.

Zachery Holden acknowledged he got into two fights with Carlos Cordero at a friend’s home on Potomac Circle after accusing Cordero of spilling a marijuana pipe, but said Cordero started the second fight as Holden was trying to leave.

Friends broke up the first fight, Holden said, but no one tried to stop the second one after Cordero came charging out of the house and attacked him and girlfriend Blaire Sanders, now Blaire Sanders-Holden.

Holden said he was outside the house then, trying to apologize to the homeowner through a kitchen door. The resident, Dawn Cantwell, had ordered him to leave after his first fight with Cordero.

He could see that Cantwell’s son was holding Cordero back to keep him from coming out the kitchen door, he said, but then Cordero cut through the living room, came out the front door and rushed him.

Cordero hit Sanders when she tried to intervene, Holden said, and continued the combat, so Holden pulled a knife with brass knuckles on its handle to defend himself and the woman, he said.

“I had to react,” he testified, later adding, “He came and he attacked me.”

He kept the knife on a belt loop because he often used it to dismantle cardboard boxes at a restaurant where he worked, he said.

He said he could not recall pulling the knife on Cordero, and denied stabbing his friend four times, despite a medical examiner’s testimony the body had four wounds, one of which cut Cordero’s femoral artery.

Holden said he stabbed Cordero only twice. “There was no third time, that I recall,” he said.

He also could not recall Cordero falling backward onto the home’s driveway, the back of his head landing hard on the pavement.

Holden’s wife also testified, backing his story that he was trying to apologize when Cordero charged him. “I heard him tell Carlos that it wasn’t worth losing the friendship over,” she said.

Though other witnesses testified Cordero inadvertently hit her as she tried to stop the second fight, she said it was deliberate, and that Cordero hit her twice, once in each eye, causing her briefly to black out.

When she came to, she saw Cordero staggering from his wounds, she said.

Cordero died the next morning at the Midtown Medical Center, about 10 hours after the 5:15 p.m. stabbing.

Attorneys finished presenting their cases Wednesday, and are expected to give closing arguments when the trial resumes Thursday morning in Judge Bobby Peters’ Government Center courtroom.

Besides murder, Holden is charged with aggravated assault and using a knife to commit a crime.

This story was originally published October 5, 2016 at 10:13 PM with the headline "Man takes stand in murder trial, says he stabbed friend in self-defense."