BANGOR, Maine — A jury-waived trial will begin Wednesday at the Penobscot Judicial Center to determine if a Bangor man was sane or not when he beat a pregnant woman so severely 18 months ago that she went blind.
Joshua Cole, 35, of Bangor is charged with elevated aggravated assault on a pregnant person, a Class A crime, and aggravated assault, a Class B crime.
He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Cole has been incarcerated since his arrest on Aug. 18, 2014, unable to post $100,000 cash bail. He was being held at the Penobscot County Jail but is being boarded at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, according to jail personnel.
The pregnant victim was found by police with extensive trauma to her face, including severe eye injuries, after they received a report of a family fight at an Essex Street apartment in Bangor, according to previously published reports.
Police were called about 2:15 a.m. by a neighbor who told police Cole was attempting to strangle the woman. The neighbor and her boyfriend tried to intervene but were injured in the process and had to retreat inside their apartment, which was across the hall from Cole’s.
In an interview from her hospital bed in early September 2014, the pregnant woman said she was homeless before meeting Cole, who became her boyfriend but is not the father of her unborn child. She moved in with him about a month before she was injured.
She said she learned he had mental health problems when she found prescription pill bottles while cleaning the apartment.
“When I moved in he always listened to music. A week or two before [she was attacked] he stopped listening to music and his outbursts were getting more and more regular and he was doing it in public,” the woman said of Cole 18 months ago.
She said she remembered little about what happened the night she was injured. She said she left the apartment early that day after she and Cole got into an argument over her smoking cigarettes, but she recalled he apologized when she returned to the apartment after work late.
“He said something about going to the store, and that really is the last thing I remember,” she said in the 2014 interview with the Bangor Daily News.
The woman said she had a flash of a memory of being awakened and being choked until she passed out. The next thing she remembered was waking up blind and with a concussion at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“There are so many points when I lost time,” the pregnant woman said. “I still can’t remember.”
She is not expected to testify at Cole’s trial, Penobscot County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy said Friday.
Defense attorney Hunter Tzovarras said Thursday that the trial would focus on Cole’s mental state at the time of the attack.
“He does not deny what happened,” he said.
The trial is expected to last one or two days.
Cole would be confined to Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta until it is determined he no longer is a danger to others if he is found not criminally responsible for the attack by reason of insanity,
If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000 on the charge stemming from the assault on the pregnant woman and up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine on the charge connected to the assault on the neighbor.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence and would like to talk with an advocate, call 866-834-4357, TRS 800-787-3224. This free, confidential service is available 24/7 and is accessible from anywhere in Maine.
BDN writer Nok-Noi Ricker contributed to this report.