State?s exhibit No. 9 was the knife tip that doctors pulled out of Alison Kirby?s fractured skull.
Wrapped in a plastic bag, it was handed among the Baltimore County jurors at trial Wednesday as Kirby touched the scars on her head ? remains of the night her then-boyfriend tried to kill her.
“It was kind of like a staring battle for a second or two,” Kirby said, describing what happened when Christopher McCann appeared at her van window in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Then he pulled her out, she said, and started stabbing. “I heard it crunch, and I thought, ?Oh my God, I?m going to die sitting here.?”
After half an hour of jury deliberations, McCann, 24, was found guilty of attempted murder in the May 1 attack on Kirby, with whom he has three children. Judge Susan Souder also found him guilty of violating a protectiveorder that prohibited him from going near her.
McCann is due back in court on Dec. 8 for his sentencing. The maximum he faces is life in prison.
Defense attorney Hossein Parvizian could not be reached for comment. He raised the point at trial that investigators never tested blood found on McCann?s clothes that night, or on the knife they recovered.
Such tests were unnecessary, prosecutor Jennifer Schiffer said, because “with the evidence we had, it was an easy case to argue.”
Witnesses included Kirby?s friend, who drove with her at about 11:15 p.m. to Wal-Mart for diapers, and a store employee who chased McCann off, according to court testimony.
A succession of police officers described sealing off the woods and finding McCann in a thicket of vines and brush.
At one point, Parvizian produced a set of photographs taken since the attack, including one that apparently showed Kirby, 21, at a music festival. They must have come from MySpace.com, Kirby said.
“He can?t stand the fact that I?m trying to make my life normal,” she said. “I?m making myself a new life.”
