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Years from now, Jonathon Mattix will still be telling his story in prison, possibly convincing himself if he hasn’t already, that he shot his gun in self defense. No kidding, he’ll tell them. A 54-year-old woman who lived in the woods between Wayne Haven Street and the river, just a short bike ride from his mother’s mobile home on Moeller Road, grabbed his .38 special and turned it on him.

But Tuesday, the first day of a murder trial for Jonathon Mattix, Dawn Kovach's sometimes estranged family came for one of their own.   “She was missing her eyes and her left cheek was sunken in,” wrote Allen County Deputy Coroner Investigator Jeffrey McCracken in a probable cause affidavit submitted two days after she was found. As a medicolegal death investigator, he also identified three holes in her lower neck area.

Louisa Young is still waiting to hear from the Indiana Department of Correction concerning her son’s death. Damarcus Thomas turned 25 on his deathbed, so to speak.

A mother is grieving here after her son died at Pendleton Correctional Facility without explanation. Damarcus Thomas, who would have been 25 Oct. 19, was sent to St. James Ascension Hospital Sept. 28 and put on a ventilator.