Bond set at $2M for suspect in killing of 3 in Columbus

By Jeb Phillips, Stephanie Czekalinski and John Futty

Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS

The day before Tia Hendricks and her two children were found stabbed to death, Columbus police received a 911 call from her cell phone.

The call, which was made just after 7 a.m. on Thanksgiving, lasted about 17 seconds.

A woman screamed and cried.

“Caron!” she yelled about 3 seconds into the call. She seemed to say the name again a few seconds later.

Then the call cut off.

A Franklin County judge set bond at $2 million Monday for Caron Montgomery, Hendricks’ live-in boyfriend. He is charged with killing her; their 2-year-old son, Tyron Hendricks; and Hendricks’ 10-year-old daughter, Tahlia Hendricks.

Montgomery, 36, had a knife stuck in his neck when Columbus police found him Friday at the scene of the triple homicide at the family’s North Side apartment.

A bandage covered the wound Monday when he made an initial appearance in Franklin County Municipal Court. Judge Anne Taylor set a combined bond of $1 million for the mother’s death and $1 million for the children’s.

Each victim was stabbed “numerous times” in the apartment at 465 Broad Meadows Blvd., just south of Worthington, a Columbus suburb, according to a police report read in court. It appears that Montgomery stabbed himself, police said.

He was kept at a hospital overnight for observation, but his wound did not require stitches, a homicide detective said.

The 911 recordings reveal that a dispatcher twice tried to call Hendricks back after her call was disconnected. The dispatcher contacted Sprint Wireless and learned the phone was registered to Hendricks, but the billing address was for her former home on Hague Avenue on the West Side.

A GPS trace of the phone put it in the area of Rosslyn Avenue, on the North Side, about a block south of the apartment complex where Hendricks and her children eventually were found.

The dispatcher also called nearby Sharon Township police to see if they had any similar calls.

Columbus officers went to the area but didn’t find anything. It wasn’t until just after noon Friday that Hendricks’ family members and a friend became so worried about not hearing from her that they went to the apartment themselves.

, calling police when they got no answer.

Montgomery has been charged with hurting Hendricks in the past. In April 2009, he choked her during a fight at a South Side residence, according to police records. He paid a fine and was put on probation.

In 2004, Montgomery was convicted of assaulting a different girlfriend. He grabbed her around the throat, threw her into a wall and struck her on the top of the head and under her right eye with a closed fist, according to court records. He paid a fine and was put on probation in that case, too, according to court records.

Judges often give batterers probation so they can get counseling and the court can keep tabs on them, said Judge Mark A. Hummer of Franklin County Municipal Court. He took over Montgomery’s case last December, after he was sentenced.

But Karen S. Days, president of the Columbus Coalition Against Family Violence, said batterers need to serve at least some time in jail.

“When there seems to be no consequences in terms of loss of freedom, that’s the wrong message,” she said. “To send a message, there has to be some jail time.”

At the Ohio Statehouse, most domestic-violence bills that have been presented this year are likely to die at the end of the year, including House Bill 486. It would have increased potential jail time for first-degree misdemeanor offenses to one year, up from six months. It also would have standardized domestic-violence investigation forms and created a board to review domestic violence-related homicides.

Reps. Marian Harris, D-Columbus, and Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, introduced the bill in January, and it was rewritten several times after meetings with prosecutors, law-enforcement officials and others.

Harris said they reached agreement on everything except a fatality-review board, which prosecutors still oppose because the board could keep collected information from prosecutors and police.

John Murphy, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said he doesn’t see a need to increase criminal penalties, as called for in the bill.

“Domestic violence has always got a number of issues around it beyond the normal assault case,” Murphy said, adding, “We don’t see any crying need in this bill.”

“If anyone had known that on Thanksgiving Day 2010 that that guy would commit the heinous acts that are alleged, every police officer, prosecutor, clerk, judge and domestic-violence advocate would have done everything possible to make sure he was not at-large,” Hummer said.

Dispatch reporter Jim Siegel contributed to this story.