DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Testimony came to an abrupt halt in the trial of a man accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend after kidnapping her and her child at a daycare center.
Before that, an office manager testified that defendant Taco Nash threatened to kill his child’s mother, the baby, and then kill himself.
DeKalb County Senior Assistant District Attorney Ashley Johnson showed the jury video of the incident at Education Elevation Children’s Academy on Snapfinger Road from June 15, 2022.
In the video, it shows where Mic’keya Montgomery, 21, picks up her 1-year-old daughter, Chloe, and they wait for an Uber to take them home. Suddenly, you see Nash rush towards them.
“Move. Gone. Move,” you hear Montgomery tell him.
The young mother was frantic and ran back into the daycare with Nash chasing her.
Prosecutors say he was out of control and refused the office manager’s repeated demands that he leave.
“You belong to me. You’re mine. That’s my girl. She belongs to me. I told you this was going to happen,” Johnson said Nash kept shouting.
Prosecutors said Montgomery broke up with Nash because he was abusive.
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She wrote a note two weeks before she was killed, not far away from the daycare.
“I can’t stay any longer because if I do, you’ll kill me someday,” Johnson said, reading the note from a large screen in the courtroom.
Johnson then showed the chaos in the daycare as workers scrambled to get the children to safety.
Johnson said Nash had a gun and threatened violence.
“I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill that baby, and then I’m going to kill myself,” Johnson said Nash shouted.
The office manager later recounted how she saw Nash with a gun and heard him make several threats.
Prosecutors said Nash forced Montgomery and Chloe from the daycare and into some woods. They said that’s where Nash shot her while she held Chloe.
But Nash’s attorney says he didn’t kill her.
“She shot herself. And I’m going to prove it to you,” Arnold Ragas said to the jury.
Ragas said the gun was found in Montgomery’s hand, and he pointed to a note found in her purse where she said she was going to kill herself before Nash did.
He also said it’s on video what Nash said when he was arrested.
“She shot herself. She shot herself,” Ragas said the video shows his client telling police.
He also said Nash didn’t force Montgomery to leave the daycare.
The office manager said that is far from the truth. She was emotional on the stand where she described how Nash terrorized Montgomery and refused to let her go.
The office manager eventually became ill and had to cut her testimony short. She will be back on the stand on Wednesday.
Nash faces 13 charges, including felony murder, malice murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault and child cruelty. He has entered a not guilty plea.
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