Jun 13, 2003  |  By: RYAN LEE  | COMMENTS     

around, Love said Price ripped down the shower curtain and hit him with the bat several more times.

“It was like someone wanted to kill a dog. It was just beating and beating and beating and bashing,” Love said.

Price’s attorneys said he hit Love only once with the bat before Love fell to the ground and Price left the bathroom.

“As I looked in the mirror I saw that four of my teeth had been chipped and one was causing some nerve pain,” said Love, who also suffered a fractured skull.

He returned to the bathroom and began searching the floor for his teeth.

He then made his way to the campus infirmary, located in the basement of Brazeal Hall, where a nurse treated him while the awaited campus police and ambulance.

Meanwhile, in his room, Price called his best friend, fellow student Stacey Merritt, and asked him to come to his dorm. As Merritt arrived, Price asked him to go into the bathroom to check on the unknown person he had just hit with the bat.

The two then left Brazeal Hall, taking the bat with them to Merritt’s dorm room. From there, they called Price’s father, a minister in Chicago, the defendant’s hometown.

After the conversation with his father ended, Price testified that “Stacey and I prayed.”

During a sometimes heated and dramatic 40-minute cross examination, Hill criticized Price for not contacting Joseph McNeil, the resident director, calling his father for counseling or praying with Merritt after the initial conflict, before grabbing a bat.

Love underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain after the attack, according to medical testimony. His head injury was serious enough that Love could have slipped into a coma or died had he not received immediate treatment. The surgery left Love with a seven-inch scar along the left side of his head, and forever prone to headaches, memory loss and seizures.

trong>Police investigation
On the morning of Nov. 4, the day after the attack, Morehouse Police Chief Vernon Worthy and Sgt. Dovetta Davidson turned their attention to Price after interviewing every other first-floor resident at Brazeal Hall.

Minutes after they identified Price as the sole resident who had not been accounted for, Worthy and Davidson were notified that Price and his father were on campus and eager to discuss the incident.

“They were using, ‘Once we tell you, you’ll understand,’ terminology,” Worthy said about Price and his father. “He didn’t like the fact that another male was looking at him under those circumstances.”

Worthy said Price told him he was embarrassed by Love’s initial glance, but seemed more troubled when Love entered the neighboring shower stall.

“That really upset him,” Worthy said.

The police chief’s testimony contradicted the c