Witnesses said they heard Marvin Walter Harding gasp, “I?ve had enough,” before he crumpled to the ground, his chest and abdomen riddled with stab wounds.
Harding was pronounced dead less than an hour later at Howard County General Hospital.
Witnesses said they thought Adrian Maldonado, 23, and Harding, 39, were fist-fighting over a woman during the second day of the murder trial of Maldonado, who is accused of fatally stabbing Harding in a dispute last November outside the Copper Stallion Motel. Howard Circuit Court Judge Richard Bernhardt is presiding over the trial, which is expected to wrap up today.
“[Maldonado] had his back up against the wall, and all of a sudden [Harding] said, ?I?ve had enough,? ” said Virginia Lee Johnson, who lives at the motel in 7600 block of Route 1 with her fiance and son.
The men were fighting over a woman with whom they had been involved, Johnson said.
Johnson testified she never saw a knife in Maldonado?s hands, but she struck him in the head with a bicycle, and then tended to Harding, who lay on the floor dying.
Police arrested Maldonado about an hour later, after Johnson and her fiance, who were on their way home from the hospital, spotted him walking in the area of Route 1 and Guilford Road and alerted police.
In the trial?s opening arguments Monday, Howard County Assistant State?s Attorney Stacy Mayer told jurors that “this case is about the inequities of bringing a knife to an argument.”
Maldonado?s defense attorney William Welch III said Maldonado was acting in self-defense.
Harding was one of four homicides in Howard County last year.
