The Florida woman forced to walk naked down a Harlem block in the dead of winter while her jealous ex-boyfriend filmed the ordeal broke down on the stand Monday as jurors watched the footage in horror.
“He grabbed my neck, and forced it really hard. I was losing breath,” the 24-year-old testified, saying her former flame, Jason Melo, “tortured” her for two hours before he pushed her out into the cold and pulled out his cell phone.
“He was saying many things, like I’m a whore, I could kill you right now, I’m capable of anything,” the woman, whose name is being withheld, told the court as Melo stared down at the defense table.
She said that during the hours-long ordeal, he threatened to kill her multiple times after finding explicit texts with other men on her phone. Melo also allegedly swung a heavy stone Buddha statue at her, as if he intended to bash her head in, while their two-month old daughter lay on the bed, just feet away.
“He said, you know what, you’re gonna pay. You’re gonna get naked and you’re gonna go out on the street, and you’re gonna pay,” she testified.
In footage that horrified the city, which has since been removed from Instagram, Melo could be seen following the woman, her thin frame wrapped in a bath towel, down the block while he berates her in Spanish.
Melo’s girlfriend walks on a New York City street wearing only a towel in a video that appeared online.Jurors Monday watched the disturbing two-minute clip, in which Melo reaches out and yanks the towel away, forcing the naked woman to seek refuge between two parked cars as she attempts to cover herself.
“Pay, pay the price for your shame,” he spits at her as she inches downs the street in the Jan. 2016 cold. “You’re going to pay the price for being a whore. Since you’re a whore, you’re going to pay like a whore.”
“There, on the trash, exactly,” he sneers as she stops by some trashcans. “Pose with your trash.”
She eventually wraps herself in a dirty-looking motorcycle cover as he continues to film her, and the tape cuts off.
She testified that Melo later started trying to sell merchandise based on the video, including t-shirts and hats bearing his quotes.
One flat-billed cap bore the phrase, “Let’s go, participa,” which Melo says in the video. The text wraps around the image of a poodle, which the woman said was meant to symbolize that she was a “b—ch.”
Melo faces up to seven years behind bars if convicted on the top count of felony coercion.
