Attorney says jury will hear two different stories
A Fayette County jury will have to decide if Robert Karwatske attacked an Adah woman without warning last year or if he was defending himself against the woman’s attempt to rob him. Her voice shaking, Thelma Louise Turner, 45, told jurors Monday that she was going to the bedroom of Karwatske’s home to smoke marijuana when she got hit from behind.
“I turned around, and I saw him with the crowbar, getting ready to hit me again,” Turner testified.
Turner said she put up her hands to block the blows because she thought Karwatske, 23, of Uniontown, was trying to kill her.
She recalled him saying once, “You’re going to die,” and remembered yelling to herself that he was going to kill her.
Turner testified she struggled with him and got the crowbar away from him.
She said she hit him once, and after slipping on her own blood, she got out of the apartment.
A neighbor called 911, and stayed with her until help arrived.
But Karwatske’s attorney, Nicholas Timperio, said in his opening to the jury that Karwatske would take the stand and present a very different story.
Timperio said that when Karwatske went out in the middle of the night on May 15, 2006, he was looking for sex.
“He wasn’t going out looking for Girl Scout cookies. He was going out looking for a prostitute,” Timperio told jurors.
Turner said she and Karwatske saw one another in downtown Uniontown as she was on her way from an apartment in the Fayette Bank Building to the A-Plus convenience store.
She denied she was a prostitute, but told jurors that she went to Karwatske’s home with him because he said he had marijuana.
In Karwatske’s home, Timperio told jurors that the two agreed to have sex, when, without warning, Turner hit Karwatske with a crowbar.
Although state police trooper John Marshall charged Karwatske with attempted homicide, Timperio argued that if he wanted to kill Turner, Karwatske could have used the knife he had on him during the attack.
At the end of the case, Timperio told jurors they will have to judge credibility and figure out whose story makes more sense to them.
Timperio said before they walked to Karwatske’s home, Turner suggested they go back to the bank building apartment. Later, Timperio said, they discovered there was a man in that apartment.
He told jurors that it was possible that Turner had plans to rob Karwatske.
Turner indicated that after the alleged assault, she heard Karwatske on the phone, apparently calling for help.
“There’s a prostitute. She tried to rob me. I beat her, I think she’s dead,” she quoted him as saying.
She testified she never tried to rob Karwatske, who had nearly $100 on him.
The beating, Turner testified, left her with fractured orbitals around both eyes, a fractured left shoulder, cracked teeth and staples and sutures in her head to close wounds from the alleged attack.
Timperio indicated that Karwatske will take the stand in his own defense, likely this morning, and the case will probably conclude shortly thereafter.
Karwatske also is charged with aggravated assault, simple assault and drug offenses.
Deputy prosecutors Phyllis Jin and Michelle Kelley are prosecuting the case before President Judge Conrad B. Capuzzi.