By Lisa Redmond
Lowell Sun
WOBURN — Shirley paramedic Albert Deshler looked down the basement stairs of the Morin Road home and saw two motionless bodies at the bottom and “a lot of blood.”
Robert Gulla and his former girlfriend Allison Myrick, both 19, were side-by-side with two knives between them, Deshler testified Friday during Gulla’s murder trial.
“I saw a lot of blood,” Deshler said. “There was blood all over the place.”
Myrick, 19, a Fitchburg State student from Groton, had a stab wound to the back and was cool to the touch, Deshler said, so he turned his attention to Gulla, who was moaning in pain. Gulla, then 19 as well, had a self-inflicted gash up his arm and the right side of his head was swollen from shooting himself with a pellet gun.
Gulla, of Shirley, would survive the Jan. 23, 2010 attack. Myrick would not.
When Deshler and another EMT turned Myrick face up, he could see five stab wounds to her abdomen and chest, plus a large gash across her neck. Her face was so bloody, swollen and bruised, “I could not recognize her face,” Deshler testified.
Myrick’s family sobbed quietly in the courtroom during Deshler’s testimony.
Prosecutor Lisa McGovern alleges that Myrick was tortured by Gulla, her ex-boyfriend, in a fit of jealous anger after he found proof on her cellphone that she had been talking to other men.
Gulla repeatedly stabbed, beat, and shot Myrick between the eyes with a pellet gun and burned her with a cigarette, McGovern alleges.
Gulla, now 21, is on trial in Middlesex Superior Court, charged with first-degree murder and violation of a restraining order.
Defense attorney John Galvin, who represents Gulla, says his client doesn’t deny killing Myrick. Gulla was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. Galvin will use a mental-health defense.
The trial will continue on Monday.
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