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WILKES-BARRE — After Dayna Williams was beaten, burned, bound with zip ties and sealed inside a barrel, her alleged attackers brought her to a remote area and asked whether she had any last words before one of them ran a knife across her neck, she testified Wednesday.

Williams, 24, described her brush with death during the first day of testimony in the attempted murder trial of Jerone Andre Moore, one of two men prosecutors allege brought Williams to Bear Creek Township to kill because they believed she had stolen an iPhone the night before that incriminated two people as drug dealers.

“This is going to shock you,” Assistant District Attorney Mamie Phillips warned of the details of the case in her opening statement. “This is going to horrify you. And it all began over a cellphone.”

Moore, 33, of Wilkes-Barre, is accused of cutting Williams’ throat and leaving her for dead on Oct. 5, 2014. He faces aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and kidnapping in addition to an attempted homicide charge.

One of Moore’s codefendants, Nygee Jamal Taylor, 27, pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and was sentenced to 9½ to 19 years in state prison. Another — Chloe Amelia Isaacs — admitted to false imprisonment and assault charges in July and is awaiting sentencing.

“These two animals wanted Dayna Williams dead over a cellphone,” Phillips said of Taylor and Moore.

‘I thought I was dying’

Williams told jurors she met Moore on Oct. 3, just days before the alleged attempt on her life. The two met at a bus stop in Wilkes-Barre, and she invited him to stay at her home in Pittston because he had nowhere else to go, she said. The pair went to a party together at Taylor and Isaac’s residence on North Hancock Street in Wilkes-Barre the next night.

Isaacs, 23, testified Wednesday she awoke the next morning to find her iPhone was missing, so she went to Williams’ residence to retrieve it the next day. At Taylor’s request, she said, she brought Williams back to her apartment.

Isaacs, on cross-examination, acknowledged she lied to investigators at first to protect Taylor and Moore and out of fear she and her family would be harmed, but later came forward to tell the truth because “she felt horrible.”

“I’m testifying because it’s the right thing to do, and that should never happen to anybody,” she said.

Williams, then 22, testified she was stripped naked as soon as she set food in Isaacs’ door. A group of women took her wallet and identification and draped a garbage bag over her, she said. She was beaten and burned with cigarettes before she was forced to the attic and sealed inside a barrel, she testified.

Hours later, she said, Moore emerged from downstairs and gave her prescription drugs. He and the others rolled the barrel downstairs and outside, where Williams was placed in the trunk of Isaacs’ car and taken to an area near Lake Aleeda Road in Bear Creek Township.

Williams said she felt something cold at her back as Moore and Taylor pushed her toward the woods. One of them asked if she had any last words before Moore allegedly ripped a 3-inch-deep gash into her neck. Taylor, meanwhile, allegedly urged Moore to “cut deeper,” she said.

“I was in shock,” she recalled. “I thought I was dying.”

Williams picked herself up and stumbled through the woods — naked and covered in blood — until Thomas Barry and his family heard her struggling to scream from their nearby home, according to testimony.

The ordeal was “like something out of a horror movie,” Barry testified.

Barry said he armed himself with a shotgun and stood guard as his wife and daughter tended to a “hysterical” Williams, who was claiming “they’re after me. They cut my throat.”

“I don’t know who or what is out there,” he said of his thoughts at the time. “So I’m going to protect my family, protect my home and protect this girl.”

Victim on the defensive

In his opening, defense attorney David W. Lampman II said Williams had “many accounts” of the alleged incident that “vary wildly.” He said prosecutors have crafted their case through the “cooperation of criminals,” many of whom remain uncharged in the case. Jurors will see firsthand the flaws of the criminal justice system, he added.

“This case has reasonable doubt all over it,” he said.

During a lengthy cross-examination, he took aim at multiple inconsistencies in Williams’ prior testimony about the incident.

Williams, he noted, had told a nurse the person who allegedly cut her was a short man with dreadlocks, more similar to Taylor’s appearance than Moore’s, he said.

“You described Taylor as the man who cut your throat,” Lampman said.

“I may have said that because I was confused,” Williams said.

Williams, Lampman said, testified Wednesday that Moore was wearing a camouflage hat when allegedly he cut her, but previously testified she wasn’t sure which of the two men who led her into the woods was wearing the hat.

Lampman did not dispute whether Moore was present at the scene, but said Moore was only there at the request of Taylor, who was the “paranoid mastermind” of the plot.

In her opening statement, Phillips said even though Williams took Moore in, Moore’s true loyalty was to Taylor.

“When someone disrespects Nygee Taylor … Mr. Moore knows the consequences are dire,” she said. “Mr. Moore knows the consequences are deadly.”

Mistrial denied

Judge David W. Lupas ruled on a motion for mistrial made by Lampman following the conclusion of testimony Wednesday.

Lampman argued Williams and Isaacs made references to Moore’s history of dealing drugs, details the judge had previously ruled wouldn’t be allowed at trial.

“We had an understanding this was off-limits,” Lampman said. “I’m stunned the commonwealth didn’t inform their witnesses to stay away from that.”

Assistant District Attorney Angela Sperrazza argued the references were made in response to Lampman’s questions.

“That’s not basis for a mistrial,” Sperrazza said.

Lupas agreed that prosecutors “didn’t illicit the responses,” and denied the motion.

Testimony will continue Thursday.

For other local crime stories, click here.

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By Joe Dolinsky

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Reach Joe Dolinsky at 570-991-6110 or on Twitter @JoeDolinskyTL