Widow tells how victim died; sides rest

WALDRON -- The wife of Tou Lor testified Friday that she saw 24-year-old Joshua Beyard stab and slash her husband to death, closing the state's case before a Scott County Circuit Court jury.

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The defense presented one witness before resting Beyard's case Friday afternoon. Beyard's father, Doug Beyard, testified that his son was distraught when he picked him up after the stabbing on Feb. 9, 2014.

Beyard's attorneys are arguing to the jury of six men and six women that their client contends he killed Lor in self-defense in the Lor home, east of Waldron.

But Xee Lor, testifying through an interpreter, told jurors that Beyard attacked her husband without provocation and stabbed him in the neck.

Associate Arkansas Medical Examiner Frank Peretti testified that the worst wound Lor, 60, suffered was a slashing injury to the throat that severed the carotid artery, jugular vein and the trachea, although a dozen other cuts and stab wounds contributed to Lor's death through the loss of blood.

Xee Lor said during the Friday testimony that the evening of the attack, she and her husband had returned home from church and were eating food they brought back from there. Xee Lor said she was in her bedroom checking phone calls on her cellphone when someone knocked on the door at about 7:40 p.m.

She said her husband called to her, asking whether he should open the door. Xee Lor responded that no one had called to say they were coming over, so she told Tou Lor not to answer the door.

But by then, Tou Lor had unlocked the door and opened it just a crack with a security chain attached.

A young man Xee Lor identified as Beyard asked to use the phone so he could call his mother to pick him up, she said.

Testimony earlier in the day showed that Beyard had dialed the cellphone of a friend, Bradley Snead.

Xee Lor said she handed her phone to Beyard through the crack in the door and he dialed a number. After apparently not connecting with the person he dialed, Beyard handed the phone back.

He then said he was cold and asked to come inside. Tou Lor took the chain off the door and let him in, Xee Lor said.

Inside, he tried to make another call that also failed. Xee Lor said as Beyard handed her the phone with his left hand, he reached behind him with his right hand and pulled out a knife. He grabbed her husband by the throat and started stabbing him in the neck, she testified.

She said she knew she had to call for help, so she ran out the back door and dialed 911.

Meanwhile, Tou Lor suffered numerous wounds to the face, chest, arms, hands and back as the attacker went through the house turning on lights in different rooms. Lor's blood was smeared on light switches, a wall and the front door.

Arkansas State Police investigator Cpl. Corey Mendenhall testified Friday that he believed Beyard was going through the house searching for Xee Lor, unaware she had run out of the house. He left, leaving what Mendenhall believed was one more blood stain on the top of the gate to the Lor property.

Mendenhall testified that he took Beyard's statement the next day, in which he contended Tou Lor had attacked him because he thought Beyard was going to rob them. He said he did not recall Xee Lor being in the house at the time.

"He was screaming, 'He's robbing us, he's robbing us,'" Beyard said in a recorded statement played for the jury Friday.

He said in the recording that he walked back to his friend's house about a mile away and borrowed Snead's phone to call his mother and ask her to pick him up.

His mother, Rhoda Beyard, testified Friday that when her son called her, he said he had been in an altercation with an Asian man on the road and had to stab him but didn't know how badly.

Doug Beyard and Joshua Beyard's brother, Michael, went to pick him up.

Doug Beyard testified that his son was hysterical.

"He said, 'Daddy, I'm not a mean guy. He kept coming at me, coming at me,'" Doug Beyard quoted his son as saying.

Michael Beyard testified that his brother later told him three or four Laotians attacked him on the road and that he stabbed one of them.

Michael Beyard also testified that his brother said he may have thrown away the knife used in the altercation. The knife used to kill Lor has never been recovered.

Closing arguments and jury deliberation in the trial begin at 9 a.m. Monday.

State Desk on 01/31/2015

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