The day after a savage attack at an upscale Bethesda yoga store, a woman believed to be one of the victims gave police a chilling account.
What Brittany Norwood told a detective about the attack that left 30-year-old Jayna Murray dead at the Lululemon Athletica where they worked rattled the region as police searched for the two masked men who killed Murray and cut and raped Norwood.
A week after the March 11 slaying, Norwood, 29, was arrested. At her trial for first-degree murder Thursday, prosecutors played a tape of the interview in an effort to show Norwood lied extensively to try to hide her role in the killing.
Her first words to Detective Deana Mackie were: “Can you tell me how my friend is doing?”
As the two screamed for help, one man repeatedly struck Murray; the other grabbed Norwood’s hair “and told me if I said another word he’d slit my throat,” Norwood told Mackie.
Prosecutors say Norwood lured Murray to the yoga store to kill her, then posed as a victim to cover up the slaying; her defense attorney said in his opening statement that Norwood “lost it” during a fight and “unfortunately and stupidly” killed Murray.
In the nearly hourlong interview, which took place at Suburban Hospital, Norwood told Mackie through tears that Murray “was just screaming and yelling and I couldn’t do anything.”
The masked men, she said, were laughing throughout the attack.
She provided few details about the assailants. She said one tied up her feet and arms, then cut her arms, stomach and chest. She didn’t know what weapon he used.
“I wasn’t looking, I couldn’t see, I wanted it to stop,” she said.
Norwood described a man dragging Murray through the store. The other attacker raped her, then sexually assaulted her with a hanger, she told the detective.
She said she tried to get away to help Murray, but “there was so much blood” that she almost slipped.
JoBeth Hager, nurse who treated Norwood at Suburban, testified Thursday that Norwood primarily suffered “very superficial” wounds.
Maureen Reges, a forensic nurse who examined her for sexual trauma, said Norwood didn’t have injuries consistent with having been raped.
