A Roseville paramedic said one homicide victim was so badly injured that not only could he not determine her race or gender, or even if she was human.

Paramedic and firefighter Emily Payton testified Friday at the preliminary hearing in 39th District Court for Martin Allen Yost, 43, of Sterling Heights, who is charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Dhoua Liz Lao, 45. of Warren, who was found horribly beaten with Yost in a vehicle in Roseville a year ago.

Payton said he arrived around 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 13, 2023, and found Lao on the floor in the front passenger side with his bloody head resting on the center console.

“Her head was extremely swollen,” Payton said. “Her eyes were purple and swollen. I couldn’t tell her race or age. Her head didn’t look human, somehow.”

She said the right side of her head had an “indentation”.

When the incident was originally reported in November 2023, the Macomb County District Attorney told WWJ-AM (950), “I’ve never seen a fight like this. Not.”

Payton testified that she initially thought, “We have an unconscious person,” but “When we moved her, it became more obvious that she was dead.” She was not breathing, had no pulse and no electrical activity was coming from the heart, she said.

A driver called 911 to report that a man was beating a woman in a vehicle in Detroit.

The vehicle was found by Roseville police about a half hour later parked on Gratiot Avenue near Interstate 94. Yost, who was Lao’s boyfriend, passed out in the driver’s seat of the vehicle slumped over the wheel, said Lt. Allison of the Roseville Police Department. Reiger.

Reige testified when he entered through an unlocked vehicle door, Yost woke up.

“His hands had blood on them,” she said. “His hands also had hair on them. It wasn’t his. It was long hair that was obviously not his.

“It looked almost done. I didn’t know what was going on then.”

She observed the victim on the passenger side of the front seat, surrounded by blood.

“There was a large amount of blood on the floor of the vehicle, on the console, on the dashboard,” she said. “The vehicle appeared to be a crime scene.”

He was placed in a Rosevile patrol car. Detroit police arrived and initially arrested him, but the case was later transferred to Roseville. Yost’s attorney, Marissa Kulcsar, questions whether the case should be prosecuted in Wayne or Macomb counties.

Friday’s hearing was the third day of the exam. Kulcsar and Assistant Macomb District Attorney Rebecca Kelley will file legal documents and appear at a Dec. 19 hearing before Judge Alyia Hakim, who will decide whether the case should be sent to Macomb Circuit Court.

Meanwhile, Yost remains held in the county jail without bond.

Records show Yost has a history of assault with at least three prior domestic violence convictions, including a domestic violence conviction of a pregnant person in a 2019 incident in Wayne County, for which he was out on parole 17 days prior of being beaten Lao. He was sentenced in 2020 to one to five years in prison.

He also had a third domestic violence conviction for a 2015 incident in Wayne County, for which he was released on probation “without enhancement,” state prison records say.

He was also convicted of carrying a concealed weapon, fleeing and eluding police and driving with a suspended or revoked license in 2009 and 2010 incidents, all in Wayne County, records say.