Defendants Try to Stab Attorney, Grab Gun

The trial of Kayson Pearson and Troy Hendrix, accused of torturing a woman over days and then murdering her, got crazy yesterday when Pearson stabbed his attorney as Hendrix tried to grab a gun from a court officer. Pearson used a shiv to stab Mitchell Dinnerstein in the chin when he was being taken out of the court, and the Daily News says that was the diversion for Hendrix to jump across the table and go for Sgt. James Gorra's gun. The murder victim's mother, Elle Carmichael, had testified earlier and reportedly said, "No! No! No! They're animals. They should have been killed! Why didn't the police shoot them?" Her daughter, Ramona Moore, was a student at Hunter and had been missing for weeks; Moore's body was found, disfigured from being "bashed and mangled by a hammer, saw, barbell and knife."

Although Pearson and Hendrix had been stripsearched, the plastic shivs were undetected. And the police also found a "metal item...in the rectal area of one of the men," according to the AP. Dinnerstein, who defended the Carnegie Deli killer, was relatively uninjured and said, "Every defendant has a story. So many of the stories are sad and tragic."