On a frigid January night in 2015, a 24-year-old Vernon Hills woman, covered in blood, staggered through an exit door at the Century 16 movie theater in Deer Park.
The woman, who had been stabbed numerous times and was initially helped by teenagers in the lobby, was soon aided by Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy Francis Foy, who was wearing an operating body camera.
Foy, the first responding officer, talked to the woman and tried to keep her awake. Her clothes were drenched in blood and she had bandages on her head. He repeatedly asked her, “Who did this to you?”
“Danny … Danny Dion,” the woman responded in the graphic body camera footage shown to a jury Tuesday morning during the first day of testimony in the attempted murder trial of Daniel Dion, 20, of Des Plaines.
Foy testified from the stand that he turned his camera on during the incident because, “I wasn’t thinking she was going to survive.”
But paramedics quickly arrived, and the victim did survive, recovering from critical condition before and after surgery. On Tuesday, she provided alternately tearful and calm testimony about the attack.
Throughout the showing of the video and the victim’s testimony, Dion, dressed in a gray suit, kept his head bowed, not looking at the video screen or the witness stand.
He did seem to watch a second video shown to the jury Tuesday of his arrest in a nearby parking lot taken by a dashboard camera in the squad car driven by Foy, who also was the arresting officer in the case.
Foy, responding to a report that the defendant might have been spotted in the parking lot of a nearby commercial building, drove up to the scene, and the squad car video showed Dion kneeling in the snow with his hands up in the air.
Foy exited his car and shouted, “Do you have a knife?”
Dion responded by repeatedly shouting, “He made me do it. He (expletive) made me do it.”
“Who is he?” Foy asked, but never got an answer.
Dion was handcuffed and identified himself before he was placed in Foy’s vehicle. He also said he was injured, and Foy called for an ambulance and additional officers.
Inside the car, with the squad car video still on, Dion repeated, “He made me do it,” but again refused to respond to follow-up questions, including “Made you do what?”
Dion has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of attempted first-degree murder and three counts of aggravated battery for allegedly stabbing the woman, his date that evening, more than 20 times in a car outside of the theater on Jan. 8, 2015.
He faces a mandatory sentencing range of 6 to 30 years in prison if found guilty of the charges. He has been held in Lake County Jail without bail since his arrest.
Before Foy’s testimony Tuesday, the victim, now 26, took the stand and was questioned by Assistant State’s Attorney Lauren Kalcheim Rothenberg.
The victim testified that both she and Dion worked in the same business in a commercial area within walking distance of the theater. She said that two days before she was stabbed, Dion had asked her out, but she said she had other plans.
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After work on the evening of the attack, the victim said she saw Dion in the parking lot of the business and the two decided to go to a movie at the nearby theater and drove together in her car after he went to get something from his car that she said she assumed was his wallet.
She said once in the theater parking lot, the two smoked marijuana and decided which movie to see. But during a conversation before leaving the car, the victim said she felt she may have said things that upset Dion, because she was talking about another man she liked.
The victim said she then began texting her mother to say she would be home late because she was going to a movie.She then testified that Dion, whom she had previously identified in court as the man “looking down in a gray suit,” grabbed her phone and threw it to the floor.
“He started kissing me kind of aggressively,” she said, and then said she initially thought he hit her hard with a water bottle, because liquid was suddenly streaming down from her neck. Crying on the stand, she said she reached up and realized the liquid wasn’t water and that Dion continued stabbing her as she asked “Why?” and tried to fend him off.
The victim said she tried to exit the car, but Dion grabbed her by the coat and pulled her back in, continuing the attack. “He kept stabbing me,” she said, making downward stabbing motions with her right hand. She said she was even more afraid because he had a “smirk” on his face as he was attacking her.
Eventually, she said, she broke free and made it to the theater. The first people to aid her were patrons in the lobby, who brought her water, and she said she remembered feeling badly that they had to see her like that, because they were teenagers.
Under cross-examination by defense attorney Ian Kasper, the victim acknowledged she had a dating relationship with Dion and the two had been intimate at her apartment “once or twice.”
She also replied yes when asked whether they kissed at work in stairwells, and if it was consensual.
The woman testified that she remembered one “red flag” on an occasion prior to the attack “when he got rough.”
According to authorities, the victim suffered punctured lungs as well as cuts to her face and neck during the attack outside the theater, and was taken to the intensive care unit at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights.
Lt. Jeff Hallehan with the Palatine Fire Department, who was present at the theater before the victim was transported, said she was “covered in blood.”
“I knew she had multiple severe injuries,” he said, adding that she appeared to be suffering from some wounds that he believed to be life-threatening. Hallehan said the woman was responding to questions from officers, but her answers were becoming more lethargic before they were able to transport her to the hospital.
In opening statements Tuesday morning, Rothenberg outlined roughly the same narrative the victim would later describe about the attack. She emphasized the repetitive, violent nature of the stabbing by making stabbing motions in front of the jury.
Kasper began his opening statement by loudly quoting, “He made me do it. He (expletive) made me do it,” later explaining to the jury that was Dion’s behavior and state of mind when he was arrested.
Kasper told the jury that forensic psychologist Dr. Karen Chantry reviewed the police reports pertaining to the attack and interviewed Dion for a total of about 18 hours, and will testify at trial that based on this information, she found him to be insane at the time of the alleged attack.
The burden of proving insanity at trial is on the defense. Under state statute, a defendant can be found not guilty by reason of insanity if he suffers from “a disease or defect of the mind such that he lacks the substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct.” The prosecution still has the burden of proving the crime was committed by the defendant.
Judge Daniel Shanes said during jury selection Monday that he expects the trial to conclude by the end of the week.
Twitter @jimnewton5