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Her neighbor, Lynda Romero, was standing outside her door "covered in blood, jumping up and down and telling me to call 911," Stephanie Gray testified at a preliminary hearing Monday.
As she helped her bleeding neighbor inside her home, Gray said, Romero told her that her boyfriend, Calvin B. Lynch, had beaten her with a baseball bat.
Romero later told police she had been in bed, asleep, on the morning of Oct. 10, when she was awakened by a blow to the head from a baseball bat.
Lynch, 31, continued to swing the bat at her, Romero told police, but she managed to block two more hits with her arm.
The two struggled, Lynch choking her until she lost consciousness, Romero told troopers.
When she awoke, Romero told police, Lynch ordered her to stay on the bed "while he paced back and forth smoking crack cocaine."
She grabbed her 1-year-old child, who was in a crib near the bed, and sat there for hours, Romero told police. The two older children, ages 6 and 3, were in another bedroom.
Finally, around 8:30 a.m., Lynch left the house, and Romero took the children and ran to her neighbor's house for help.
After listening to more than two hours of testimony on Monday and looking at color photographs of Romero's bloodied head, face and arm taken the day of the assault — as well as pictures of her blood-soaked bedding and the bloodied baseball bat — District Judge Isaac Stoltzfus ordered Lynch to stand trial on all charges.
Those charges include: aggravated assault, unlawful restraint, recklessly endangering another person and possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia.
Lynch also was ordered to stand trial on a charge of intimidating witnesses for calling Romero from prison two days after his arrest in an attempt to convince her to drop the charges.
Assistant District Attorney Daniel Dye did not call Romero to testify at Monday's hearing, relying instead on the accounts of the neighbor, the emergency room physician and the trooper who arrested Lynch.
Dye also played the recording of Lynch's telephone call from jail.
In the phone conversation, Romero told Lynch that she had repeatedly expressed concerns about his use of alcohol and drugs before the attack.
Lynch said he needed treatment, not prison time, and Romero responded with, "You've had plenty of chances."
Romero told Lynch that he beat her so badly and her arm is so fractured that she "can't even open a cereal box."
"If I wanted you to be dead, you would be," Lynch told Romero in the recording.
As defense attorney Beverly Rampaul objected to the tape recording, Lynch, sitting across the room in handcuffs and leg chains, told constables to get him out of the courtroom or he was "going to snap."
A few minutes later, the hearing resumed with Trooper Samuel Laureto testifying about comments the defendant had made during his arrest on Oct. 11.
"He was upset with the victim for calling the cops," Laureto said. "He said, 'I've taken a lot of beatings, and I wouldn't have called the cops.' "
Lynch, again interrupted the proceeding, calling out, "That's a … lie!"
Continuing his testimony, Laureto said that Lynch had talked about other things and made incriminating statements, but that he would not discuss the incident.
"He said crack makes him paranoid," Laureto recalled, "and that she wasn't sleeping."
Laureto said he was dispatched to Lancaster General Hospital that morning, where he encountered the 29-year-old Romero.
She had suffered a fractured elbow and required six stitches to close the wound to her head, the court was told.
When Laureto went to the couple's Maple Street home later that day, the trooper said, he saw a marijuana pipe on the dresser in the bedroom.
In the bathroom, Laureto said he found a bag of cocaine on the bathroom sink, near the blood-stained baseball bat propped against the corner.
Lynch was returned to county prison pending trial. Romero is continuing to recover from her injuries.
