Trial Begins For Man Who Stabbed Stephenville Mother
STEPHENVILLE (CBSDFW.COM) - The Stephenville woman who was paralyzed during a random stabbing at a city park in March looked her attacker in the eye in an Erath County court Tuesday.
On March 14, Brandi Todd, 28, was sitting in the Stephenville Park watching her children play when prosecutors say Michael Howard, 42, approached her and plunged a knife in her back. The attack left her paralyzed.
She fielded questions from the District Attorney for 14 minutes Tuesday before pointing at her alleged attacker.
"It felt like someone had taken a bat and cracked me over the back with it," Todd told the jurors.
Howard, the defense told jurors, was schizophrenic and taking anti-psychotic, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. They said he was seeing and hearing things, and that he was frustrated with the local Mental Health and Mental Retardation facility.
The police investigator said Howard told him he walked around the perimeter of the Stephenville Park, and claimed to have encountered a few college-aged men who taunted him. He told investigators that this annoyed him, and that he had a knife and felt like stabbing someone.
Todd said she saw Howard walking away from her after she was stabbed in the middle of her back.
"That's when I reached back and looked at my hands, and I looked to the side and I was pointing, and I was trying to say, 'he did this! He did this,'" Todd said Tuesday.
A psychiatrist testifying for the defense said that not all people with mental illnesses like Howard's stab young mothers in the back at city parks.
On Wednesday, prosecutors will bring in their own psychiatrists. After closing arguments, the jury is expected to begin deliberating Howard's fate.
