Man charged in Lithia slaying had violent past in Michigan

When the decision got here Saturday night time, Michelle Rogers was at her mother’s home in Michigan along with her two school-age sons.

She knew the quantity. Knew one thing was mistaken.

She stepped outdoors along with her cell so the boys wouldn’t see her react.

“He did what?”

She began to panic. Couldn’t breathe.

She feared this was going to occur, however nonetheless couldn’t consider it.

Her former boyfriend, the daddy of her youngest son, had simply been arrested for homicide within the Tampa space.

Information reviews stated he had gotten into an argument with a lady at a Valrico bar, then killed her —inflicting “extreme higher physique trauma.”

Hillsborough County deputies described the scene as “horrific.”

“I attempted to warn her,” Rogers stated Sunday. “I attempted to warn everybody, however nobody would hear. This didn’t need to occur.”

5 years earlier, Matthew Robertson Terry, 47, had began combating with Rogers after getting drunk on St. Patrick’s Day. He stabbed her within the neck seven occasions of their Lansing, Michigan, residence, beat her head towards the ground, broke her nostril and a molar, bit her face.

She stated she nonetheless doesn’t understand how she wriggled away and screamed loud sufficient for neighbors to name 911.

She spent 5 days in intensive care.

Legal professionals bought his tried homicide cost dropped to “try to inflict nice bodily hurt.”

In line with Michigan Division of Corrections information, he was sentenced in December 2017 and was “discharged” from the jail system on Dec. 29, 2021. Rogers stated he served three years in jail and one on parole.

She begged the parole board to not let him out. He’s “a really sick particular person who mustn’t roam in society,” she wrote. “Mr. Terry is harmful and can harm one other individual, it’s merely a matter of time. Besides the following time, that individual may not be as fortunate as I used to be.”

Rogers was so scared she moved to a different state.

A yr later, Terry was off parole and moved to Florida, Rogers stated, to be with a lady he had as soon as dated in Michigan.

“I saved telling her, ‘Please, don’t let this occur to you or your children,’” stated Rogers, 41. “However she wouldn’t consider me.”

Hillsborough deputies haven’t launched the title of the lady discovered on the homicide scene. The house at that deal with belongs to a Hillsborough instructor.

Rogers stated the lady was buddies with Terry years in the past, then reconnected with him at his 2017 trial.

She got here up from Florida to help him, Rogers stated, “and simply saved obvious at me.”

Terry is an ex-Marine and software program engineer, Rogers stated. He performed hockey, coached children’ wrestling and loved spending time on the water.

When deputies discovered him simply after midnight Saturday, he was hiding in overgrown brush off Lithia Pinecrest Street. They took him to Tampa Normal Hospital to be handled for lacerations he bought whereas combating his sufferer.

Sunday afternoon, he nonetheless had not been booked into jail.

A day after getting the information, Rogers was offended, annoyed, shocked — however probably not.

She stated she feels terrible for the sufferer, horrible her warnings went unheeded. And relieved Terry can be behind bars once more, the place he can’t harm her or her children or anybody else.

Her head aches from reliving her personal trauma. And her coronary heart aches for her son, who hasn’t seen his dad since he was an toddler. He was supposed to fulfill him subsequent month. She doesn’t know what to inform him.