Julia Martin returned her engagement ring. According to her father, Derrick Martin, she had broken off the relationship with her boyfriend of the past three years around six months ago.

When Rodney Harvey came over to collect the ring on Friday night, he forced to open the door and stabbed her repeatedly before jumping to his death from her apartment in the 3000 block of South King Drive.

Martin, 27 years old from Detroit, tried to save her own life. She grabbed her phone and called police about 7 PM. She asked them to send an ambulance for her. She told them the name of the man who stabbed her.

Then she called her dad. Derrick Martin said on Monday, “Not only did she call me, she texted me while she was going through all this. She was calling everybody, saying that she wanted help. She called another friend and she was panting over the phone, trying to get her breath. He thought it was a prank and he hung up on her. He feels so bad.”

He was not alone. Martin doesn’t check his phone often and didn’t see the text message from his eldest daughter until much later. It was written, “Call me ASAP.”

Julia Martin had been taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 7:37 PM, from multiple sharp force injuries.

Harvey, 35 years old, of the 2300 block of South Michigan Avenue, who’s death had been ruled a suicide.

Martin was a Michigan State graduate and a human resources supervisor at a local architecture firm. She had never given her father any reason to worry that the man she spent so much of her life with was dangerous.

According to her father she recently had started dating again. Derrick Martin said, “There was no indication he was dangerous … I never would’ve thought that in a million years”.

By Prakriti Neogi