Columbus man sentenced for beating his pregnant girlfriend with a clothes iron

It took about as long to sentence Deron Devon Mahone to life in prison Friday as it took a jury Wednesday to convict him of beating his pregnant girlfriend unconscious with a clothes iron: around an hour.

After hearing testimony and attorney arguments, Judge Arthur Smith III sentenced Mahone to life with possible parole for home invasion, plus 20 years for aggravated assault, and another year for assaulting an unborn child, a misdemeanor.

Typically inmates sentenced to life are eligible for parole after 30 years. Born Dec. 23, 1971, Mahone turns 46 Saturday.

His victim now is 29, with four children ages 8, 6, 3 and 2. She was six months’ pregnant with Mahone’s child on June 12, 2015, when Mahone was released from the Muscogee County Jail after serving three months for violating probation.

He had been arrested after his girlfriend of two years told police he’d broken into her home and stolen her cell phone. While incarcerated, Mahone swore to a cellmate that he would make her pay. The other inmate was released first, and went to the woman to warn her.

The night before Mahone’s release, the girlfriend sent her three children to stay her sister.

When Mahone got out of jail, he went straight to her home in what then were the Booker T. Washington Apartments off Veterans Parkway, a public housing complex that since has been demolished.

Arriving shortly before 10 a.m., he kicked her front door so hard it split in two, ran up the stairs and into her bedroom, grabbed the iron and bludgeoned her with it until it broke into 13 pieces.

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

When she fell to the floor, he repeatedly kicked her in the groin and abdomen, then left her unconscious and bleeding on the floor.

“He left her for dead, and he tried to kill the unborn child,” Assistant District Attorney Wesley Lambertus told Smith during Mahone’s sentencing hearing.

Her injuries included a deep gash over her right eye that left a scar, a fractured occipital lobe, placental bleeding, broken ribs and a broken left arm she had raised to ward off the blows.

Noting the scar on her forehead, Lambertus said, “That’s a reminder this victim’s going to have for the rest of her life.”

The victim told Smith she was so traumatized she still has nightmares. “I have flashbacks to what happened,” she said.

Mahone faced life in prison as a recidivist or repeat offender: He had a 2002 conviction for aggravated assault and a 1995 conviction for aggravated stalking.

“He has a very violent past,” said police Cpl. Christy Truitt, who investigated the 2015 attack. Like Lambertus, she also asked Smith to give Mahone the maximum penalty. “If he gets out, he will harm someone,” she said.

Mahone also addressed the court, but in so low a voice he was hard to hear. He alleged the victim falsely accused him of stealing her phone, which led to his arrest for violating probation.

Lambertus seized on that: “This defendant has shown that everyone is at fault except him,” the prosecutor told Smith. “He has it backward. He has it upside-down…. That’s why we’re asking for the sentence that we are asking for today.”

Defense attorney Jose Guzman argued against adding 20 years to his client’s life sentence, saying Mahone should not be treated as if he committed a murder. “The rule of law still applies here,” the attorney said. “This is not a murder, although it is a very serious case.”

The life sentence should be punishment enough, he said: “Life is life…. A life sentence is exactly what it means.”

Lambertus countered that Mahone’s brutal assault on an unarmed woman who was 26 years old and 23 weeks’ pregnant was particularly egregious, and that the Georgia General Assembly in outlawing home invasion clearly wanted the offense to be treated as seriously as other crimes for which defendants may be sentenced to life.

Those other crimes, commonly called the “seven deadly sins” in Georgia, include murder, rape, aggravated child molestation, aggravated sodomy, aggravated sexual battery, voluntary manslaughter, and armed robbery involving a gun.

Judge Smith referred to the home-invasion law before giving Mahone the maximum sentence. “Georgians have a right to be safe in their homes,” he said, as he recounted the victim’s injuries, the attack on her unborn child, and her lingering trauma.

The judge declined to go a step further and revoke all of Mahone’s probation, the terms of which he violated yet again when he nearly beat the woman to death. Life plus 21 years should be a sentence “sufficient to protect the community,” Smith said.

This story was originally published December 22, 2017 at 1:04 PM with the headline "Columbus man sentenced for beating his pregnant girlfriend with a clothes iron."