photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Dustin Ian Lane is pictured Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Douglas County District Court with his attorney, Michael Clarke.

A Douglas County jury on Monday heard a frantic 911 call from a woman who said her husband was trying to kill her, but when the woman herself took the stand, jurors heard an entirely different story: The couple simply had a heated argument, the woman testified, and she was “not really sure” how she had acquired injuries that police later documented as being consistent with strangulation.

She was too “intoxicated on marijuana” to remember details, she said, and her 39-year-old husband, Dustin Ian Lane, had been drinking, which had upset her and caused the argument on July 21 — an argument that escalated when she began filming with her phone and upsetting him. She acknowledged pushing Lane, but she didn’t recall his ever laying hands on her.

Despite her testimony, the state is trying to convince a jury that the real version of events is the version depicted in the breathless, sobbing 911 call, where the woman, who is pregnant, describes being punched repeatedly in the face, dragged by her hair and twice choked almost into unconsciousness. In the call she pleads over and over again for the dispatcher to “hurry” officers to her home on West 28th Street before Lane kills her or hurts her two small children who were still in the house with him.

The state says Lane was intentionally trying to end the woman’s life — attempted second-degree murder — but the defense contended in opening arguments that something like the woman’s version on the stand is closer to the truth: The two had a marital fight fueled by “alcohol and anger” that simply spiraled out of control.

“Domestic conflicts are rarely simple,” defense attorney Michael Clarke told the jury of nine women and four men, one of whom is an alternate juror.

Clarke told jurors that his client acted out and made “poor decisions” in what he called an “impulsive, emotionally charged moment,” but it was “not a calculated intent to kill”; rather it was something more akin to aggravated battery at most. Clarke said the woman’s contrary statements to authorities were made in the “heat of the moment” and that she does not really believe he was actually trying to kill her. He said he would call both Lane and possibly the woman to the stand on Tuesday to support that contention.

The state, represented by Senior Assistant District Attorney Ricardo Leal and Assistant DA Jenna Phelps, called six witnesses to testify Monday before resting their case. Most of those witnesses were law enforcement personnel who testified about responding to the 911 call in July and to another call in August, which ended in Lane being arrested for violating an order to not contact the woman and a charge of aggravated intimidation of a witness. In the latter incident, an officer testified that the woman was “very upset” that Lane had reportedly been trying to keep her from testifying about previous domestic violence.

At Lane’s preliminary hearing in September, the woman refused to testify until Judge Sally Pokorny threatened to hold her in contempt, and even then she acknowledged only that she spoke to police on the July night in question, but declined to say anything else.

Police officers’ testimony on Monday — largely similar to what the Journal-World reported from Lane’s preliminary hearing — included their accounts of the woman’s injuries, and the jury saw police photos of red marks on the woman’s head and shoulder, as well as marks on her neck that officers said were “consistent with strangulation.”

Officers also testified about how the woman reported that Lane had deprived her of her phone to prevent her from calling the police, how they found her phone in a bedroom closet under a blanket and how the woman had grabbed Lane’s phone before leaving the home without her kids to call 911.

Lane is currently in custody, with a bond set at $50,000 cash or surety. His trial is scheduled to resume Tuesday morning, when he is expected to take the stand in his own defense.

He has previous felony convictions in Douglas County for drug possession in 2014 and again in 2017, making a false report in 2017, and aggravated assault in 2007, according to Kansas Department of Corrections records.