Addison man testifies about vicious attack, says it was over $50 debt
An Addison man spent Tuesday afternoon detailing for a DuPage County judge how a torturous beating inflicted on him three years ago left him fearing for his life and permanently disfigured.
All for fifty dollars.
Prosecutors said an ex-girlfriend's debt sparked the severe beating of 45-year-old Steven Stanley at the hands of 35-year-old Runaldo Ramsey of Chicago.
Ramsey is charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and home invasion. Prosecutors say he attacked Stanley inside his apartment with a beer bottle and two 3-feet-long gardening weeders, one of which was blunt, the other with a forked end.
Stanley testified that he was getting ready for bed about midnight June 9, 2012, when Ramsey and his girlfriend, whom Stanley knew through his ex-girlfriend, were pounding on his kitchen window at his apartment on the 900 block of South Addison Road.
Stanley, recognizing the couple, let them in and said he asked if everything was OK. He said, after exchanging brief pleasantries, Ramsey became agitated and demanding Stanley pay him the $50 that Stanley's former girlfriend owed Ramsey, Stanley testified.
After giving Ramsey the only $20 he had, pushing him out of the way and begging him to leave, Ramsey attacked him, he said.
First Stanley said he was cracked in the head with an unopened beer bottle but managed to escape briefly to get to his cellphone.
"He said if I called the police he would come back and shoot me with his .357," Stanley told Judge Robert Kleeman. "But I dialed the 9 and the 1 and he tackled me in my bedroom, sending me crashing through my brand new TV."
After that, Stanley said, the attack worsened as Ramsey stood over him, choking him.
"I'm barefoot, in my shorts, kneeling in glass and getting strangled," Stanley said. "And he's telling me he's going to pull my ... head off."
The attack let up briefly and Ramsey appeared to leave but Stanley said he didn't make it back to lock the kitchen door before Ramsey came at him with the first of two garden weeders, which were kept outside Stanley's apartment door. After beating Stanley to the point of breaking the wooden handle of the first garden tool, he testified Ramsey came back in and stabbed Stanley several times with the much sharper, forked-end garden tool.
After being stabbed above his eye and slipping in his own blood, Stanley thought he "was a dead man" as Ramsey plunged the forked end into the back of his head.
"I felt it penetrate my head and I was amazed that I was still conscious," Stanley said. "Then he stabbed me exactly five times in the back before dropping the weapon."
Ramsey fled, and Stanley called 911. Stanley was eventually treated for what doctors testified was bleeding under the skull and outside the brain, and several cuts, including a 4-inch gash on the right, rear portion of his head.
Ramsey, of the 2400 block of West Taylor Street, has been convicted of misdemeanor domestic battery in DuPage twice since 2010 and was on probation for that offense at the time he is accused of attacking Stanley. A third domestic battery case filed against Ramsey in 2011 was dismissed.
The bench trial resumes at 10 a.m. Wednesday in courtroom 4012.