The trial of Bellator and UFC veteran War Machine (born Jonathan Paul Koppenhaver) continues to unfurl, and as it does, more gruesome details about his 2014 attack on Christy Mack and her then boyfriend Corey Thomas continue to emerge.
The latest of these harrowing details come from Las Vegas detective Daniel Tomaino, who took the stand on Friday afternoon. Tomaino, who visited Mack in the hospital shortly after she was brutalized by War Machine, explained that he was initially unable to make sense of her accounts of the attack because she was missing so many teeth.
“I just couldn’t understand what she was saying but it was because she didn’t have teeth,” he said (via BloodyElbow.com).
War Machine is facing a whopping 34 charges, including attempted murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault. These charges stem from a single incident in 2014, during which he brutalized Mack with such severity that she was left not only with missing teeth, but a broken nose, a fractured eye socket, a broken rib, a lacerated liver and extensive bruising. During this attack, War Machine also assaulted Mack’s boyfriend at the time, Corey Thomas. As Mack reported in earlier court proceedings, she believed he was going to kill Thomas.
“Jon was beating Corey, and then at some point he began choking him,” Mack said.
“Yes I did,” she continued, when asked if she believed War Machine was going to kill Thomas. “Eventually he just stopped,” she added, detailing the end of War Machine’s attack on Thomas. “He let him go. It looked like they were both just tired. And then he sat him down, and Corey asked him what his end-game was, and he said basically that he was going to let him go, but that if he told anyone or called the cops he was going to send his friends after him.”
The War Machine trial is expected to resume this afternoon. Stay tuned to BJPENN.COM for details as they emerge.
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/13/2017.