Washougal man believed he was going to be killed
STEVENSON — When the two attackers accosted him on a snowy trail, demanding his car keys, Kevin Tracey thought it would be a simple robbery. He handed over his keys and then his backpack, thinking the men would be satisfied and go away.
But, as he recounted Monday to a jury, the next moments turned into a horrifying ordeal of being brutally clubbed, strangled and left to die in the woods near Dougan Falls on the Washougal River.
“Calm, cool and collected, they just kept hitting me,” Tracey of Washougal said, pausing briefly, apparently to collect his emotions.
Tracey took the stand Monday afternoon as the prosecution’s first witness in the trial of Michael D. Collins, accused of first-degree attempted murder and first-degree robbery. The trial is taking place in Skamania County Superior Court in Stevenson.
Collins, 34, and his 17-year-old son, Teven Collins, are charged in the Feb. 9, 2009, attack. On Friday, Teven Collins agreed to plead guilty to second-degree attempted murder. As part of the plea deal, he must testify against his father.
The father and son were apprehended March 25 in Ensenada, Mexico, shortly after the case was featured on a segment of the “America’s Most Wanted” TV program. Skamania County Sheriff’s detectives used a tip generated by the TV show and Teven Collins’ MySpace account to find the father and son.
Jury selection began Monday morning, and 12 jurors were seated from a pool of 89 people, one of the largest ever in Skamania County Superior Court. That’s approximately 2 percent of the county’s registered voters.
‘We can’t let you go’
Brief opening statements followed in the afternoon with Judge E. Thompson Reynolds presiding. Tracey took the stand just before 4 p.m.
He told the jury about a routine cross-country skiing trip that turned nearly deadly. Dressed in a striped blue collar shirt, Tracey was calm as he testified, breaking down in tears in a few parts of his story.
After initially giving over his keys and backpack, Tracey remembered one of the attackers telling him, “I’m sorry, but we can’t let you go.”
‘What were you feeling at that time, Mr. Tracey?” Skamania County Deputy Prosecutor Chris Lanz asked.
“Horror,” Tracey said.
He pleaded with the men to let him go. “If you murder me, they’re going to come find me,” he remembered saying.
The men cornered him. Preparing to run, Tracey took off his skis. “At that point, I was thinking that I’m probably going to be shot,” he said.
He saw a chance and ran. Only 50 feet away, he heard one of them yell, “Get him.”
That’s when the younger attacker jumped on him from behind and grabbed his arms, pulling them behind Tracey’s back. Next came five or six blows with a club to his forehead.
Next, the older attacker wrapped a nylon cord around his neck, pulling tightly.
“What are you thinking at that point?” Lanz asked.
“This is it,” he said. “At that point, you kind of leave the attack mentally … I thought, ‘My God, I just went up to go skiing and now I’m being beaten and strangled to death.'”
That’s when Tracey blacked out. His last memory was the sensation of being dragged toward a wooded area.
When he woke up face down in the snow, he couldn’t remember where he was. But then, he looked up and saw a trail of blood, leading to a road. He tried to stand up, but fell back down from the pain.
He realized that he needed to hide from his attackers, so he began crawling toward the river, looking for a hiding spot.
“I knew if they came back to check for me, I was done for,” Tracey said.
He found a culvert to hide in and buried himself with leaves. Minutes later, he heard women’s voices. He pulled himself up and out of the culvert and yelled for help.
Some hikers spotted him and called for help. Emergency personnel responded, and Tracey was then hoisted into an emergency vehicle and rushed to Southwest Washington Medical Center.
He will take the stand again this morning and is expected to be cross-examined by the defense.
The trial is expected to conclude Friday.
Although Lanz has said in an earlier interview that Michael Collins could face life imprisonment under Washington’s three strikes law for persistent offenders, he clarified this information after court Monday. He said one of the strikes — a child molestation conviction in 1992 in Clark County — happened when Collins was a juvenile and, therefore, doesn’t count under the law.
