Holland Township —
On Thursday morning, as his stepfather was shipped from the Ottawa County Jail to state prison in Jackson, Joe Mattson said he felt only pain at the close of a year that has torn his family apart.
Mattson’s mother, Lola Slagh, is dead, a victim of domestic violence, and Dennis Slagh will spend anywhere from two to 15 years behind bars for his role in her death.
“She was, like, my family. I’m her only child,” said Mattson, who grew up in Michigan but moved to Los Angeles several years ago to pursue a writing career.
An Ottawa County jury in early November found Dennis Slagh, 57, guilty of involuntary manslaughter following a May 27 assault. Circuit Court Judge Edward Post delivered the prison sentence this week.
Slagh originally was jailed on a charge of domestic violence shortly after the assault that led to his wife’s death a week later. More than two months passed before prosecutors amended the charge to homicide, so the case never got much attention.
According to Ottawa County Sheriff’s Lt. Mark Bennett, deputies responded to the couple’s Holland Township home after a 911 call came from Dennis Slagh at 8:44 p.m. on May 27 — the start of Memorial Day weekend — indicating his wife was lying unresponsive on the floor.
Medical workers provided first aid and transported Lola Slagh, 57, to Holland Hospital for treatment. She was transferred to Saint Mary’s Health Care in Grand Rapids shortly after and remained on life support for seven days before her death on June 3, court records show.
According to Bennett, Dennis Slagh provided several varying accounts of what happened that day. Authorities ultimately ruled his wife died after he pushed her and she fell, hitting her head hard against the linoleum floor in the couple’s kitchen.
Slagh returned home from work sometime between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. that day and an argument developed between the two over Lola Slagh’s drinking habits, Bennett said.
She fell to the ground after the shove and then sat up, even talking with Dennis Slagh, he told police.
Dennis Slagh then went to a Family Fare store to pick up groceries — as evidenced by video surveillance footage — and returned an hour or so after to find his wife tending to household chores, he said.
Later, Lola Slagh sat down again on the floor and began to lose consciousness. Some time passed before her husband alerted authorities, just before 9 p.m., of his wife’s condition.
Testimony by forensic pathologist Dr. Stephen Cohle fit with Dennis Slagh’s account.
Cohle said the Holland Township woman suffered from brain hemorrhaging, which resulted in a gradual loss of her abilities.
He performed an autopsy shortly after her death and found about 3 1/2 ounces of blood pooled on her brain. Bruises covered her body, he testified.
Cohle ruled her death the result of cranial cerebral trauma, or a closed head injury. The manner of death, he determined, was homicide.
“By technical definition, this is a homicide, but it rolled out a little different because she lived for a week or a little more after the event,” Bennett said. “We did treat it during the investigation as we would a serious assault or homicide.”
According to Bennett, records show Lola Slagh called 911 “several times” in recent years reporting assaults, but each time, she recanted her worries after deputies arrived, as is often the case in instances of domestic abuse, he said.
Slagh’s son, Mattson, said he received a call from his mother about two weeks before that May 27 day. She shared worries about injuries she suffered in an assault, he said, but minutes later called back to tell him everything was OK.
He made plans to travel to Michigan in early June from his home in California, after graduating college there.
He arrived a day after the graduation to find her hooked up to machines in a hospital bed.
Dennis Slagh bonded out of jail on a domestic violence charge that week and remained free until his trial in November. Prosecutors amended that charge Aug. 5 to involuntary manslaughter.
According to Assistant Ottawa County Prosecutor Craig Bunce, the two-year minimum sentence is on the highest side of the sentencing guidelines, given Dennis Slagh has no criminal history in Ottawa County.
Prosecutors faced an added complication because toxicology reports found Lola Slagh’s blood-alcohol level at the time of the assault to be 0.328 percent, four times the legal definition of intoxication.
She had struggled with alcoholism for years, her son said.
“Proving cases of domestic violence can be very difficult because oftentimes it’s just the suspect and the victim present,” Bunce said. “They are very tough cases.”
Mattson said he has lost his job in California because of months spent in Michigan sorting through his mother’s death. He suffers from “panic attacks” now and nightmares about his mother’s life, he said.
Though the two talked on the phone weekly, he said, she mentioned nothing wrong up until May. He wishes he had known sooner, and says he’ll forever live with that guilt.
“Nothing is going to bring my mom back,” he said. “My life has been forever altered by it.”
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