A Roseville paramedic said a slaying victim was beaten so badly she not only couldn’t determine her race or gender or even that she was human.

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

Payton said she arrived about at 11:30 p.m. Nov. 13, 2023 and found Lao on the floor in the front passenger side with her bloodied head resting against 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 did not look human, in a sense.”

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

When the incident was initially reported in November 2023, Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido told WWJ-AM (950): “I’ve never seen a beating like this. Never.”

Payton testified she initially believed, “We had an unconscious person,” but, “When we moved her it became more obvious she was dead.”

She wasn’t breathing, had no pulse and no electrical activity was coming from her heart, she added.

A driver dialed 911 and reported 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, was passed out in the driver’s seat of the running vehicle slumped over the steering wheel, said Roseville police Lt. Allison Reiger.

Reiger testified when she entered an unlocked door of the vehicle, Yost awakened.

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

“He seemed out of it, almost. I didn’t know what was going on at that time.”

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

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

He was placed in a Roseville patrol car. Detroit police arrived and initially arrested him, but the case later was transferred to Roseville. Yost’s attorney, Marissa Kulcsar, is questioning 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 Prosecutor Rebecca Kelley will submit legal briefs and appear at a Dec. 19 hearing in front of Judge Alyia Hakim, who will decide whether the case should be bound over to Macomb Circuit Court.

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

Records show Yost has an assaultive past with at least three prior convictions for domestic violence, including a conviction for domestic violence of a pregnant person in a 2019 incident in Wayne County for which he had gotten off parole 17 days before he allegedly beat Lao. He had been sentenced in 2020 to one to five years in prison.

He also was convicted for a third domestic violence for a 2015 incident in Wayne County for which he was discharged from probation “without improvement,” state prison records say.

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

Yost also is charged with possessing a weapon in the Macomb County Jail on the day he entered. That case is scheduled for a pretrial hearing today in front of Macomb Circuit Judge Diane Druzinski.

A handful of Lao’s relatives attended the hearing.