Court: Columbus man beat pregnant girlfriend unconscious with clothes iron

Two years ago Deron Devon Mahone got out of jail, went straight to his six-months’ pregnant girlfriend’s home and beat her with a clothes iron until it broke, authorities said.

When the victim fell bleeding to the floor, he kicked her in the groin and abdomen, then left her lying there unconscious with a broken left arm, broken ribs, a deep gash over her right eye, a fractured occipital lobe, and a bleeding placenta, according to testimony Tuesday in Muscogee Superior Court, where Mahone is on trial for home invasion, aggravated assault and assaulting an unborn child.

The woman was 29 when she was attacked shortly before 10 a.m. on June 12, 2015, at Booker T. Washington Apartments. That public housing complex off Veterans Parkway since has been razed and replaced by a new set of apartments called Columbus Commons.

Pregnant with his child after a two-year relationship, she months earlier had reported that Mahone, then 43, broke into her home and stole her cellphone. Because Mahone had previous convictions related to domestic abuse, police arrested him for violating probation.

While he was in jail, Mahone is alleged to have told another inmate he was going to punish his girlfriend for making him do time. The other inmate warned her after he was released.

Anticipating a confrontation, she had her three young children stay with a sister the night before Mahone’s release.

She testified she was awakened that Friday morning by someone yelling outside her apartment. She looked out and saw Mahone, who spotted her at the window and shouted, “B---h, I see you!”

She called 911, and was on the phone when Mahone kicked in her front door, causing it to split into two pieces, with half still hanging on the hinges as the rest broke away. He ran up the stairs to her bedroom, grabbed the iron and started bludgeoning her with it.

“B---h, I did three months because of you!” she said he yelled at her.

“He beat me with an iron over and over and over again,” she testified Tuesday. “I begged him to stop. … He kept beating me and beating me.”

She lost consciousness. When she came to, she ran downstairs and across a courtyard to the nearest apartment with an open door. “I didn’t know if he was still there,” she said. “I didn’t know what would happen next.”

She ran to an apartment where Joseph Williams was listening to music on a computer. He also testified Tuesday, recalling that he looked up and was shocked to see her swollen face covered in blood.

“She closed my front door and locked it,” he said. “She was screaming and saying somebody was trying to kill her.”

When he asked who, all she would say was her “baby’s daddy,” he said. She was shaking, screaming and crying, and about to collapse: “It was just horrific.”

Williams called police as the woman went to an upstairs bedroom and lay on the floor. When officers knocked on the door, it terrified her, Williams said: She kept saying, “It’s him! It’s him!”

The officer was Cpl. Christy Truitt, accompanied by a male trainee. Truitt testified that when she and the trainee got to the bedroom in Williams’ apartment, the woman heard the rookie’s voice and tried to crawl under the bed, so Truitt told the male officer to leave.

The victim was wearing only a short robe, and she had blood all over her body, pouring from the deep gash in her forehead. Her eyes by then had swollen shut, the officer said.

“He’s going to kill me,” the woman repeated 10 or 15 times, Truitt said.

Police summoned an ambulance, and Truitt crossed the courtyard to the other apartment, finding the broken door and a trail of blood leading up the stairs, through a hallway and into the bedroom. Blood was on the floor, the walls, and the furniture, Truitt said.

Blood also was on the broken iron, which Truitt found shattered into 13 pieces.

The corporal got a warrant for Mahone’s arrest, but could not track him down, as he had no fixed residence. Finally she and a bondsman came up with a ruse to lure him into a trap:

Using a fake Facebook account purporting to belong to a woman, they sent him an invitation to meet at a McDonald’s restaurant, and he agreed.

After confirming his identity as he drove through the McDonald’s parking lot on Nov. 13, 2015, they followed him in an unmarked car before calling in police patrol units to stop and arrest him on Victory Drive near the Dolly Madison plant, Truitt said.

Mahone’s defense attorney is Jose Guzman, who told jurors Tuesday that his client was a victim of mistaken identity.

With the jury out of the courtroom, Guzman argued that Mahone’s home invasion charge should not stand, because the law stipulates the intruder must have a weapon during the break-in, and Mahone was unarmed until he used the iron to beat the woman.

Judge Arthur Smith III did not immediately rule on Guzman’s motion.

The Ledger-Enquirer is not disclosing the woman’s name because she’s a victim of domestic abuse.

This story was originally published December 19, 2017 at 5:08 PM with the headline "Court: Columbus man beat pregnant girlfriend unconscious with clothes iron."