DETROIT (WXYZ) — After testimony from a woman who Detroit Police said survived an attack by Deangelo Martin, Judge Ronald Giles ordered Martin to stand trial in the case.
Martin is charged with kidnapping, assault with intent to do great bodily harm, and attempted rape. He's also facing attempted murder and rape charges in another case in Detroit.
At this time, Martin has not been charged with murder, but police have accused him of being a serial killer, suspected in the homicides of at least five women in Detroit since early 2018.
Police said they are aware of two women who survived attacks by Martin, and one of those women testified Thursday at Martin's preliminary examination.
The woman, who is in her fifties, testified that she was grabbed from behind in the early morning hours of June 3.
She passed out and when she regained consciousness, she said she was still being choked by her attacker but they were now in a vacant house with her attacker on top of her and some of her clothes had been removed.
The woman said she was fighting and struggling to breathe when she pulled out a box cutter that she kept in her pocket for protection.
"I flicked it," the woman testified. "And I stuck him, and I went back and I stuck him again."
She was able to break free and jump out of an open window and run to a nearby gas station for help.
The victim said she called her boyfriend to pick her up, and she said she didn't call police because she feared that she would be in trouble for stabbing someone, so she threw the box cutter in the Detroit River.
The woman later came forward with details of the terrifying attack. And it was Martin's blood from her sweatpants that tie him to the crime.
The woman initially named another man she knows from the neighborhood as her attacker because, shortly before the attack, he had asked her for sex at a nearby store and she called him an expletive and refused him flat out.
Investigators were able to identify Martin as the woman's attacker from his DNA on the bloody sweatpants.
