Condo slashing case looks like self-defense

A pre-Hurricane Irma homicide case in Key West in which an Ohio man died from a slashed throat and a second man was left bloody and seriously injured remains an open and unresolved case.

“There’s a strong indication this is a self-defense situation,” said State Attorney Dennis Ward on Tuesday. “We’re not going to take it to the grand jury.”

A knife fight between two men at the high-end Steamplant Condos on Trumbo Road ended with the worst of it going to Jason Fitzgerald Henthorne, 47, of Wooster, Ohio, who died after his throat was slashed, according to a source close to the investigation.

Ward had said last year the case would go before a grand jury but apparently changed his mind after prosecutors viewed a videotape made by the second man involved in the fight, Mikhael Anthony Blumin.

Police called it a fight between Henthorne and Blumin of Key West, who was found at 3:47 a.m. Sept. 8 covered in blood and seriously injured, according to the heavily redacted incident report released a month after the homicide.

Blumin is listed as a victim in the police report.

Henthorne was found inside the condo on the floor covered in blood. Blumin was seen with another shirtless man walking from the rear of the building, police said.

“I noticed Blumin’s entire upper half of his body was covered in fresh blood,” Officer Justin Elsmore wrote. The other man “was holding towels against Blumin’s upper back that were saturated in blood.”

Blumin had a deep cut to his right elbow. He was airlifted to a Miami hospital for treatment.

An obituary that ran in Henthorne’s hometown called his death an accident. He worked with his father at Petro Evaluation Services in Wooster and left a wife and two children.

In 2000, a Wayne County, Ohio, jury acquitted Henthorne of attempted murder after he reportedly stabbed a man who he said had threatened him at a local bowling alley, according to the The Daily Record newspaper in Wooster. A jury also acquitted Henthorne on lesser counts of felonious assault, assault, kidnapping and carrying a concealed weapon.

The Monroe County medical examiner included Henthorne among the 14 people whose deaths were Irma-related.

This story was originally published February 13, 2018 at 3:47 PM with the headline "Condo slashing case looks like self-defense."