Defendants Bound Over for Trial; Beating Victim Takes Bad Turn

A witness to the vicious attack on Steven Utash, the 54-year-old Clinton Township tree trimmer who was beaten when he stopped to assist a boy he accidentally struck with his truck, was jailed on $500,000 bond Monday after he reportedly denied earlier statements he’d made to police about the mob violence.

Anton Sykes, 30, was ordered to jail during a hearing Monday for four Detroit men who are accused in the attack, the Detroit Free Press reports. In ordering him to jail, 36th District Judge Thomas Jackson said the witness was “defiant” and likely would  disappear before the trial of the four defendants.

The proceeding was often disruptive, with one of the defendants reportedly making an obscene gesture at a photographer. Spectators laughed at times during the proceeding and one man was escorted from the courtroom, The Detroit News reports.

The defendants are Wonzey Saffold, 30;  Latrez Cummings, 19; James Davis, 24, and Bruce Edward Wimbush Jr., 17. All four face charges of assault with intent to murder and were bound over for trial in Monday’s proceedings.

Wimbush, who will be tried as an adult, waived his right to a hearing and will apparently be tried separately from Cummings, Saffold and Davis, CBS News reports.

A juvenile, who has been charged with a hate crime under Michigan’s ethnic intimidation statute, will be tried on June 23 before Judge Jerome Cavanagh. His attorney argued last week that his client acted on the “spur of the moment,” and the ethnic intimidation statute was not appropriate.

Several witnesses testified they saw 15 to 20 men kicking Utash when he got out of his truck at the intersection of Morang and Balfour on Detroit’s east side the afternoon of April 2.

Witness Ashley Daniels testified that she told Utash he should get back in his truck after one of the assailants hit him in the face. Daniels said he was hit multiple times in the face, and then was taken to the ground by the group of men, who then began kicking him.

Cummings brandished a handgun and pointed it at Utash before joining in the attack, Daniels said.

Deborah Hughes, the retired nurse who is credited with saving Utash’s life by convincing the mob to back away, testified that she heard  Cummings yell, “I’m going to kill him!”

She said that Utash appeared very upset after his pickup struck the boy. "He said, 'Oh my God, I hit a boy! Is he dead? Is he dead ... did I hurt him?' "

During the attack, Utash yelled “No!” and “Help me!” as he was hit and kicked in the head, Hughes said.

‘Sad for Us to See Him this Way’

Utash remains in the intensive care unit at a Detroit hospital. In an update on the Go Fund Me site, where more than  $180,900 has been raised to offset uninsured Utash’s medical bills, his daughter Mandi Marie Emerick posted an update about her father’s slow recovery.

“I have been putting off posting an update hoping that after the ‘next visit’ I would have some better news,” she wrote. “But days are going by and I don’t have better news to share. He is still unable to distinguish reality from his delusions. It is hard to explain in words what he is talking about. And (it’s) very sad for us to see him this way.”

Max Mohr, Utash’s brother-in-law, told The Detroit News that Utash isn’t “the Steve I know.”