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Sailor recalls shipmate slicing throat

NORFOLK, Va. — The victim was halfway through a ham and cheese omelet when someone grabbed him from behind. The next thing Seaman Jose Garcia said he could feel was something against his neck.

“He was lifting me out of my chair and slicing my throat at the same time,” he said in a courtroom on Naval Station Norfolk.

Seaman Richard Mott is charged with attempted murder after allegedly slashing and stabbing Garcia with a pocket knife on the mess deck of a berthing barge the morning of March 8, 2007, while his ship was undergoing repairs. A witness said Mott cut Garcia from his throat to temple, then stabbed him again, giving him a sucking chest wound and cutting open his abdomen.

“I saw people going crazy. Blood was all over the place,” said Senior Chief Hospital Corpsman Patrick Modglin, who testified that he treated Garcia at the scene before civilian medical personnel arrived. It was Garcia’s third day with the ship, the cruiser Cape St. George.

Wednesday was the first and last day of Mott’s Article 32 proceeding, after which the Navy could decide to drop the charges, punish him administratively or take the case to court-martial.

Modglin said he knew Mott to be a “pleasant” sailor and had heard that he was considering applying to become an officer.

“To me, Seaman Mott was no different than any other junior enlisted person coming into the Navy for the first time,” he said.

But he also testified that another chief told Modglin that Mott had said “the devil makes me do things.”

Mott has been in confinement for 18 months awaiting the hearing. The Cape St. George has since switched homeports from Norfolk, Va., to San Diego.

Garcia testified that he’s being medically discharged with 30 percent disability from his wounds.

Mott’s attorney, Greg D. McCormack, said after the hearing that a Navy psychiatrist has determined Mott was “not mentally responsible for his conduct at the time” of the alleged attack. McCormack said Mott is now under medication and in solitary confinement in the Norfolk brig after spending a period of the past year in a federal hospital under treatment.