Court documents reveal more information about the arrest reported here last week in connection with the attack on a 65-year-old Fairmount Springs woman two months ago – an attack so alarming, it led to a community meeting with a city councilmember in attendance. A neighbor of the victim, 48-year-old Monty Richardson, is charged with first-degree burglary, second-degree assault, and unlawful imprisonment. “The victim in this case easily could have died,” prosecutors write, asking for $250,000 bail and detailing the vicious attack Richardson is charged with carrying out.
Prosecutors allege that Richardson got into the victim’s home on May 8th by using a key found in a “hiding spot” outside, dragged her out of her bedroom – where she was “preparing to go to sleep” – and carried her into her basement, attacking her there. He is accused of tying her up, trying to strangle her with power cords, and “repeatedly beat(ing) her to the point that she lost consciousness.” She had told police she remembered her attacker also hitting her and jumping on her. Her injuries are described as including more than 20 broken bones, as well as neck and eye injuries related to the strangulation attempt, and broken/damaged teeth.
When she regained consciousness, according to court documents, her attacker was gone. In a bizarre twist, the neighbor’s home to which she fled – from which 911 was called – turned out to be his, but he wasn’t there. Police say a detective questioned Richardson three days after the attack, at which time, they say, he was wearing clothing similar to that which the victim had described her attacker wearing. Richardson denied having been in the victim’s home, but claimed he was in the alley near the home on the morning of the attack, trying “to have sex with a female he had met at a known drug house,” and that he fumbled with the victim’s back door. (Prosecutors say Richardson’s criminal history includes a drug conviction, and that he is in treatment “for drug issues.”) They also took a DNA sample.
More than a month later, the test results came back, on both the sample and evidence from the crime scene. Prosecutors say those results linked him to the attack and sought an arrest warrant; he was arrested last Thursday. The court documents do not describe or imply any motive for the attack. Richardson has been in jail since last Thursday evening, with bail listed as the quarter-million-dollar sum prosecutors had requested. Prosecuting Attorney’s Office spokesperson Dan Donohoe says Richardson is due in court to answer the charges on July 14th.
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