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Jurors, high def surveillance tape make guilty verdict a quick study

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Defense lawyer John Durkin confers with his client Jordan Lamonde during his beating trial on Thursday in Strafford County Superior Court. (Rochester Voice photo)

DOVER - File this one under a variation of that old Julius Caesar quote:

"They came, they saw, they convicted."

In the two hours it took them to reach a verdict, a Strafford County Superior Court jury could've watched the 28-second beating tape of Jordan Lamonde of Portsmouth tossing his victim "around like a rag doll" that June night in 2017 in the Rochester Planet Fitness parking lot some 240 times.

So it was no surprise when jurors returned a verdict of guilty on a charge of felony second degree assault.

What was a surprise was that they also returned three guilty verdicts on misdemeanor simple assault charges, too, which the prosecution had put on the table as an alternate charge in case they felt the second degree assault verdict wasn't warranted.

A simple assault guilty finding had also been urged by Lamonde and his defense attorney John Durkin.

Lamonde will be sentenced later this summer after a presentencing report is prepared. He will be able to remain free on bail pending sentencing.

Despite a flurry of close conversations between Durkin and Lamonde on Thursday that fueled speculation Lamonde might testify on his own behalf, there was little drama in this brief two-day trial.

Lamonde was on trial for his brutal attack on 19-year-old Erin McCarthy of Farmington, who was ambushed and beaten as she walked to her car in the Planet Fitness parking lot after finishing her shift around 10:00 p.m. on June 12, 2017.

Trial testimony showed a dubious motive for the attack: Lamonde's obsessive fury over his belief that McCarthy's boyfriend had allegedly stolen $30,000 in cash from a safe in his house.

So to get back at the boyfriend Lamonde snuck up behind McCarthy as she went to her car at the end of her shift, jumped her from behind and unleashed a fusillade of 40-some punches, knees to the face and head while tossing her twice to the pavement.

The attack showed "extreme indifference to the life of Erin McCarthy," Strafford County Deputy Attorney Tim Sullivan said in closing arguments. "This was violent, dangerous and unprovoked, risking her death."

Sullivan pointed out that Lamonde's first punch as he snuck up behind her was a haymaker over the victim's right shoulder and into the right side of her head "designed to put her down," he said. "He was trying to put her down with one punch."

Miraculously, McCarthy stayed up, but still took a pummeling during the 28-second attack as she was thrown around "like a rag doll," Sullivan said.

Durkin, meanwhile, said Lamonde's actions were "immature" and unacceptable, but did not rise to a felony-level assault charge.

"There was no bleeding from the nose, no gun, no verbal threat," Durkin said. "There was no extreme indifference to life."

Lamonde, 23, faces up to seven years in state prison on the second degree assault charge.

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