One man testified that he tried to interrupt an assault in a church parking lot and two others said they tried to help the passengers in a car that had careened off the side of Highway 74.
None of them grasped that they were witnessing what authorities say was a kidnapping and a homicide until it was too late.
Adam Slater, 51, of Palm Desert is charged with murder and other crimes including attempted murder, assaulting a child, and assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the death of his 1-year-old daughter, Madalyn, in 2020. He faces the possibility of the death sentence if convicted.
Slater has pleaded not guilty to the charges and was present in court Thursday and Friday for a hearing in which a judge will determine if there is enough evidence for the case against him to proceed to trial.
Slater is accused of stabbing a woman he shares a child with while in the parking lot of Southwest Church in Indian Wells on May 6, 2020. He is accused of fleeing with their child, according to a report from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department soon after the confrontation. His vehicle left Highway 74, overturned and came to a stop hundreds of feet from the roadway. Slater is also accused of stabbing a person who had freed the child from the car, and throwing the infant into a ravine, according to the sheriff's department.
Over two days, witnesses shared what they saw the day of the killing, during a hearing at the Larson Justice Center in Indio.
Todd Young said he had gone with his wife to the church as he does frequently to run his dogs in the field nearby. While driving his truck out of the parking lot he saw two cars with doors ajar, which caught his attention. In the back seat of one of the vehicles, he could see a man "pounding on a person and could hear someone saying 'help me, help me.' "
He pulled his truck over, Young testified, honked the horn about 10 times and called 911. He got out of the truck to approach, he said, but saw a man step out from the vehicle and circle around the front of the car as if to confront him. After Young stepped back into his truck he saw the man grab a child, get into the other parked car and speed off through a red light toward Highway 74.
A woman emerged from the vehicle covered in blood asking for help. Young testified she lifted her shirt and he could see the blade of a knife in the left side of her stomach. Photos presented in court Thursday showed she had been stabbed with a serrated saw-like blade with the handle broken off.
"He stabbed me," Young remembers her telling him, frantically asking for help
A second witness, Joseph Mahfet, said that he was driving down Highway 74 toward Palm Desert when he saw a cloud of dust billowing up from the shoulder of the road. He pulled his truck over near another motorist, Kenneth Jenkins, who had done the same.
"Did a car go over?" he remembers asking Jenkins, who said yes.
Jenkins testified that he was driving from Idyllwild when he saw the white SUV tap its brakes and slow before a turn. As he approached the vehicle, he said, it accelerated at a high rate of speed and launched off of the roadway.
The two began to hike down the steep roadside, riddled with cactus and boulders, he said, until they reached a white SUV that had flipped on its roof. He could hear a child crying as he neared. He and Jenkins approached the vehicle, trying to get to the people inside.
Mahfet said that a man, who he identified in the court as Slater, was prone inside the overturned vehicle, the child on his chest. The man inside was struggling and grunting to get out and Mahfet was able to grab the baby.
Mahfet remembers asking the crying child if she was ok and inspecting her body for injuries. She had a gash on her head, he said, and stopped crying as he rocked her, seeming to respond to his question.
Jenkins testified Thursday that he helped the man out of the vehicle, pulling him by his ankles until his legs were free and he was able to stand.
Then, both testified, Mahfet was attacked. Mahfet said Slater produced a knife and began trying to stab the child, who Mahfet was holding.
"I blocked him a couple times," he testified. "Then he went from trying to stab the girl to stabbing me."
Mahfet said he was stabbed in the right bicep and Slater then grabbed at the child, dislocating Mahfet's shoulder in the process — Mahfet said it is a recurring injury. What he saw next he recounted to the court in a quiet, labored tone. He watched Slater attempt to stab the child while holding her. Mahfet struck him in the chest with a rock he was able to throw and Slater turned and approached the steep cliff's edge.
"He threw the child away," Mahfet said. Jenkins similarly testified that the man, who he wasn't able to identify threw the child from the cliff.
The cliff was steep and Mahfet couldn't see where the child went after that, saying he began trying to hike back up to his truck where he had a first aid kit and where other witnesses had gathered.
Riverside County Sheriff's Cpl. Franklin Enochs was working with a trainee, Deputy Victor Tung, when they received the call from dispatch of a collision and a missing juvenile. Enochs testified that they rushed to the area of Bighorn Country Club, where the collision was believed to have occurred, but continued up Highway 74 when they couldn't find it.
Enochs said that high on the road's swerving climb up the mountain they found several parked vehicles and a nervous crowd.
"They were pointing and I heard someone say: 'He's running down the mountain with a baby,'" Enochs told the court.
Both officers testified to rushing down from the shoulder of the road to the crashed vehicle and spotting a man without shoes and who was wearing only shorts running into a ravine full of sharp rocks and cholla cactus.
Enochs said he was able to run in front of Slater, who he identified in court, and got him to stop with his Tazer drawn. Both Enochs and Tung said that Slater made statements indicating he had hurt the child, adding that was likely captured on body-worn camera, but the footage was not played during the hearing.
After Tung handcuffed Slater, they questioned him and reported to the other deputies that the child was still missing but likely to the south of where the arrest had occurred.
California Highway Patrol Officer Graham Aanested, meanwhile, had hiked down to the overturned vehicle and began searching for the infant. He testified that he hiked for several minutes in the area of where he believed the infant was, but could not locate her. He then asked a deputy to bring down one of the men who had witnessed the confrontation and with his help located a pile of rocks that looked out of place.
Aanested testified that he removed "a football-size rock" from the pile and found the infant underneath. Jenkins, one of the witnesses, testified the day before that he had seen the man he pulled from the vehicle piling rocks after he ran down the ravine, but did not say what he might have been doing.
Aanested said that he and a deputy attempted to give the child CPR until emergency medical providers arrived, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
Two witnesses testified to Slater having worked at Pizza Hut restaurants in La Quinta and Palm Desert. One witness, Rosario Lopez Ramirez, described Slater as formerly being her best friend. Ramirez was friends with both Slater and the child's mother, who all worked together at one point. She noted that she thought Slater was an "amazing father" until the harrowing events.
Ramirez testified to witnessing the relationship between the two having many challenges and was particularly turbulent soon before the killing. She said that she remembered clearly a call she received from Slater on the day of the killing, his voice was frantic and sad with the sound of rushing air in the background as if he was driving with the windows down.
"Keep everything in my apartment, everything is yours," he said, shocked she asked for more information but he hung up.
Christopher Damien covers public safety and the criminal justice system. He can be reached at christopher.damien@desertsun.com or follow him at @chris_a_damien.