“try and figure out what the issue is.”

"/> “try and figure out what the issue is.”

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Alleged victim’s brother-in-law takes the stand

By Dean Shalhoup - Senior Staff Writer | Mar 15, 2018

Staff photo by Dean Shalhoup Nashua police Sgt. Daniel Mederos, while testifying in the Mohammad Salimullah attempted murder trial Wednesday, points out possible blood stains on a Star Wars-themed blanket taken as evidence from the East Pearl Street apartment in which Salimulla is accused of stabbing his ex-wife. Judge Lawrence Smukler is at left.

NASHUA – When Mohammad Salimullah first told his brother-in-law that he and his wife had been talking about divorcing, the brother-in-law responded the way in which his native Rohingyan culture taught him: Contact several fellow members of the local Rohingyan community and convene a sort of tribunal to “try and figure out what the issue is.”

The panel’s recommendation, according to the brother-in-law, was that Salimullah and his now-former wife take some time to more deeply ponder their decision, at least until their culture’s holy week of Ramadan was over.

But a week or so later, the brother-in-law was jolted awake in the wee hours by his wife’s screams, he said Wednesday while testifying in Salamullah’s jury trial in Hillsborough County Superior Court South.

“My wife, she was screaming … she said (the alleged victim) got cut. I said to (the victim), ‘where are you cut?’ She said ‘the neck,’ ” the brother-in-law said softly from the witness stand.

“Did you ask her anything?” Assistant County Attorney Michele Battaglia asked him. “Yes,” he replied. “What did she say?”

“She said ‘my husband cut me … (now) he’s cutting himself.’ And, ‘we will die together.'”

The man, whose wife is the sister of the alleged victim, recounted on Wednesday’s third day of trial the anxiety-filled moments of thatearly morning incident in the small East Pearl Street apartment the two couples shared at the time.

Salimullah, 41, is being tried on five felony offenses, including attempted murder, accusing him of covering his then-wife’s mouth with one hand, grabbing a kitchen knife in the other and slashing her throat, allegedly because she wanted to divorce him.

He is also facing two counts of first-degree assault, alleging he “knowingly caused bodily injury” to the woman by slashing her throat and lacerating four of her fingers during the struggle; one count of second-degree assault, accusing him of “recklessly” cutting her fingers with a knife; and one count of reckless conduct, which alleges he placed her in danger of serious bodilyinjury by causing lacerations to her hands, according to the indictments.

Testimony is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. Thursday in Courtroom 3 at Superior Court on Spring Street.

Also taking the stand Wednesday were Nashua police detectives Sgt. Daniel Mederos and Sgt. Peter Urban, and St. Joseph Hospital emergency department physician Dr. Christopher Krupp, who was on duty the morning the alleged victim was brought in by ambulance.

The brother-in-law, meanwhile, said he, his wife and the alleged victim went to the living room, then he went to check on Salimullah. He said Salimullah was lying on his back on the floor, and he noticed “a little bit” of blood on him.

“I ask him, ‘why you do this?'” the brother-in-law said, adding that he got no response. Asked if he saw a knife, he said he did, and told Battaglia he picked it up, but didn’t remember putting it in the kitchen sink where it was later found.

The brother-in-law told the court that he and his wife were “in shock,” and that he passed out for about three minutes after seeing the blood on his sister-in-law.

Asked if he called for help, the brother-in-law said he called three members of the Rohingya community. “Why didn’t you call the police before calling them?” Battaglia asked.

“It didn’t come to my mind to call the police,” he responded. “Why?” Battaglia asked. He said that as a native of Burma who had moved to Malaysia, he was considered an illegal immigrant, and was thus accustomed to not calling police for help for fear of being arrested and deported.

He eventually did call 911, the recording of which was played in court.

Earlier, during cross-examination by defense Attorney Stephen Rosecan, Mederos, the Nashua police detective, testified that he interviewed the brother-in-law the next day at police headquarters.

During the interview, Mederos said, he asked the brother-in-law if he could look at his phone “to confirm that he called 911 and see if there were any other calls” around that time.

He found both, he told Rosecan, prompting Rosecan to show photos of the phone depicting its call log for that morning.

It shows nine calls were placed between 4:03 and 4:12 a.m., including two at 4:12 a.m. – followed a short time later by the 911 call.

Krupp, the emergency department physician at St. Joseph Hospital, testified later that the alleged victim was “crying and upset,” and was “conscious but unable to speak” when she arrived at the hospital around 5 a.m.

He said she sustained a “linear” neck laceration about 10 centimeters, or roughly four inches, long, which came close to her jugular vein and one of her carotid arteries, but didn’t injure either.

He said he was sure neither carotid artery was cut because if one was, “I wouldn’t have seen her … she would have bled out,” Krupp said, referring to the rapid, and usually fatal, blood loss from carotid artery lacerations.

Shown the knife that prosecutors accuse Salimullah of using to allegedly attack the woman, Krupp acknowledged it is consistent with the type of laceration the woman sustained, and “could be” the one used in the alleged attack.

Krupp said the laceration took 19 stitches to close, and several more were needed to close the cuts the woman sustained on the four fingers of her left hand.

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-1256, dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com

or @Telegraph_DeanS.

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