WALDRON -- Emergency medical technicians testified Thursday that they could offer little help to 60-year-old Tou Lor as he lay on his living room floor bleeding to death last February from multiple knife wounds that he suffered in a sudden attack from a man who asked to use his phone.
"I looked in his eyes, and he looked at me for help, and I couldn't give it," Waldron police officer and first responder Mike Collett told Scott County Circuit Court jurors in the first-degree murder trial of Joshua Beyard, 23.
Collett and Southwest EMS technician Larry Slinkard testified they were unable to control the bleeding from the wound in his neck and the other wounds in his chest, back and arms as Lor struggled and gestured that he couldn't breathe. He died in an ambulance on the way to Mercy Hospital in Waldron.
Lor family members and friends sitting in the front row behind the prosecution table appeared shocked during the testimony of Arkansas State Police investigator Corey Mendenhall when, without warning, prosecutors began projecting onto a large screen the gruesome photographs of Lor's wounds as he lay on an examination table in the Mercy Hospital emergency room.
The second photo was a closeup of Lor lying on his back, showing the gaping throat wound. Family members winced, and some looked away. Lor's wife, Xee, began weeping. Her loud sobs grew into wailing. Her family could not console her.
Circuit Judge Jerry Don Ramey called a halt to testimony for the day.
Attorneys for Beyard told the jury of six men and six women that they admit their client killed Lor on Feb. 9 but said it was in self-defense.
Defense attorney Joshua Bugeja of Fort Smith told jurors that he believed Beyard was guilty of manslaughter, which he said was defined as acting with indifference to the consequences.
In opening statements Thursday, deputy prosecutor Marcus Vaden told jurors that Beyard went to the home Lor shared with his wife in the country east of Waldron about 7:40 p.m. Passing through a locked property gate, Beyard knocked on the door and asked Lor if he could use his phone to call for a ride home, Vaden said.
He said Xee Lor would testify that her husband passed the phone through the partially open door as Beyard stood on the porch. When Beyard complained he was cold and asked to go inside, Lor opened the door, Vaden said.
Once inside, Beyard handed the phone back to Xee Lor with one hand and, with the other hand, pulled a knife from behind his back. He grabbed Tou Lor by the neck and began stabbing him, Vaden said.
Xee Lor, afraid for her life, ran out the back door and phoned for help. Vaden said Beyard, covered in Lor's blood, went through the house, turning on lights apparently searching for something. He said testimony would show that it was Lor's blood on the light switches.
After he left, Vaden said, Beyard went to a friend's home about a mile away where he had spent most of the day and used the friend's phone to call his mother, Rhoda Beyard. He told her that he had been attacked by an Asian man on the road and stabbed him.
Vaden told jurors that Beyard had no need to use Lor's phone, because he had access to his friend's cellphone all day.
Later, Beyard told investigators that Lor attacked him in the house and he stabbed him there, Vaden said.
NW News on 01/30/2015