Victim in fair condition after being shot in back; parks to step up patrols

ELYRIA — The husband of the woman who was brutalized at the county Metro Parks’ Carlisle Reservation summed up his anger for the man accused of attacking his wife in five words.

“I’d like to kill him.”

As 25-year-old Matthew Plas was charged with attempted murder and kidnapping Wednesday, the victim’s husband and family were trying to make sense of how such a thing could happen to a woman they love in a place she loved.

“We’re down there a lot, and she’s down there more than the rest of us,” the woman’s husband said as he stood outside the couple’s Elyria home.

“Look at all the flower beds I planted for her. Anything to be outside.”

The 43-year-old mother of three who was snatched as she hiked, shot in the back, stuffed in her trunk and dumped off Oberlin-Elyria Road told police she was sexually assaulted by her assailant.

She remained in fair condition at MetroHealth Medical Center on Wednesday. The extent of her injuries and whether she will be paralyzed from them are not yet known.

Emergency personnel who tended to the woman after she was attacked said she had no sensation in her legs but was wiggling her toes —  a good sign considering she was shot in the middle of her back.

“She’s tough,” her husband said.

The attack appears to have been random, with the woman and her attacker encountering each other on a trail near the Duck Pond Picnic Area on Tuesday, sheriff’s Capt. Richard Resendez said.

Plas, who was apprehended by Metro Parks rangers Tuesday after police say he dumped the woman behind a vacant building and fled into the woods in an attempt to get back to his car, appeared by way of video Wednesday before Elyria Municipal Court Judge Lisa Locke Graves.

“I know I’ve done a stupid thing, your honor,” he said to Graves, who arraigned him on the kidnapping and attempted murder charges and ordered him held without bail.

Resendez said that was more of a confession than Plas made to the deputies who interviewed him.

Resendez said deputies are still searching for the gun used in the shooting and continue to investigate.

Plas, formerly of Wellington and living out of his car at the time of the alleged attack, is no stranger to sheriff’s deputies, Resendez said.

He has a criminal record that dates to 2001, when he was convicted of DUI. He also has convictions for domestic violence, disorderly conduct, underage consumption and driving under suspension, according to Elyria Municipal Court records.

The domestic violence charge stemmed from a May 2006 incident in LaGrange when he attacked his wife, with whom he has a 2-year-old son.

According to a domestic violence protection order in effect against Plas until 2011, he beat, choked and held a knife to his wife’s throat. The incident came less than a year after the couple was married and in full view of Plas’ stepdaughter, who tried to stop him from attacking her mother, the wife wrote in her account of the incident.

Plas was last in court in February, when he pleaded no contest and was found guilty of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

In that case, he appeared before Locke Graves, the same judge who handled his arraignment on Wednesday. She fined him $150 and sentenced him to one day in the county jail. He also was told he could face higher fines and more jail time if he got in trouble in the next year, according to court records.

Dan Martin, director of the Lorain County Metro Parks, said Tuesday’s incident was the worst in the park system’s nearly 50 years in operation.

“It’s a terrible incident,” he said.

Although Martin said park rangers plan to increase their presence, he said the random nature of the crime makes it impossible to guarantee that nothing like it will ever happen again.

Martin said people can protect themselves by not hiking alone, carrying a cell phone and being aware of their surroundings.

Chronicle Chief Photographer Bruce Bishop and staff writer Stephen Szucs contributed to this story.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

 

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