Greeley – At 6 feet 2 inches tall and 230 pounds, Rafael Mendoza still proved no match for the black-clad assailant who knocked him down, slashed at him twice with a knife and then plunged the blade deep into his right leg the night of Sept. 11.
Mendoza, the first-string punter for the University of Northern Colorado football team, testified Wednesday that his wounds healed but the emotional and physical pain of the attack lingers.
“I kept thinking, ‘Why would anybody do this?’ ” said Mendoza, who stifled tears on the witness stand in Weld County District Court.
Prosecutors claim Mitch Cozad wanted Mendoza’s starting job so badly that he resorted to stalking his rival and tried to kill him. Cozad is on trial on counts of first-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault in the strike on Mendoza.
If convicted, Cozad faces more than 40 years in prison.
Cozad sat impassively at the defense table while Mendoza recounted the assault for jurors. Before Mendoza’s testimony, however, Cozad’s mother lashed out at prosecutors for allegedly trying to get a prosecution witness to lie under oath.
Suzanne Cozad testified she heard a district attorney’s assistant tell a Verizon employee to misrepresent herself when she was called to the witness stand. “I couldn’t understand why someone wanted to put my son in prison for 48 years with a lie,” Suzanne Cozad told Judge Marcelo Kopcow.
Kopcow ruled there was no clear evidence prosecutors were trying to influence testimony.
Later, Mendoza’s family cried when they heard the 911 tape of Rafael Mendoza calling for help. A panting and crying Mendoza yelled to an operator: “Someone tried to carjack me!”
The attack occurred as Mendoza was walking back to his Evans apartment through a dimly lit parking lot. He told jurors he could hear someone running toward him and caught a glimpse of a right-handed fist headed for his head.
After the blow, Mendoza went down to a fetal position and looked up in time to see his assailant pull out a knife. Mendoza got on the floor to show jurors how he reacted that night.
His attacker – whom Mendoza could not identify – swiped at him twice before stabbing Mendoza in the leg. The man then ran off, leaving a shaken Mendoza to recover and wonder how his life would go on.
“I was crying, shaky and scared,” he said. “I thought my career, just about everything, was over.”
Jurors also heard from teammate David Dyches, who said Cozad constantly asked if he would make the first team. Dyches testified that at one point Cozad said: “If Rafael got hurt, do you think I’d be the starter?”
UNC head football coach Scott Downing also testified that Cozad worked hard but clearly was not as good as Mendoza.
