‘I wish I would have shot you,’ victim’s mother tells War Machine

Erin Mackinday stared at the man accused of beating and raping her daughter.

She had witnessed abuse Christine Mackinday suffered at the hands of mixed martial arts fighter War Machine, but did not talk to police about it until after a particularly vicious attack in August 2014, she told jurors.

A prosecutor asked whether the mother regretted not contacting police sooner.

“No,” she said, her eyes focused on the defendant. “I wish I would have shot you.”

The 35-year-old War Machine, also known as Jonathan Koppenhaver, faces 34 counts in connection with the attack on Christine Mackinday and Corey Thomas, who was in her home at the time.

Christine Mackinday, a former adult film actress who used the stage name Christy Mack, spent two days last week testifying about her life with Koppenhaver, the repeated abuse she endured and the hourslong attack that led to his arrest.

Her mother spent 45 minutes on the witness stand, occasionally stern and sometimes sobbing, as one of the prosecution’s final witnesses in the trial, which resumes Tuesday afternoon.

She would glance fiercely at the defendant when she spoke of “a couple of times” she had witnessed him become physically violent with her daughter, who became isolated throughout her relationship with him.

“You could see her independence slip away,” she testified.

War Machine had sent Erin Mackinday text messages within hours of the early morning attack on Aug. 8, 2014, urging her to go to the central valley home where her daughter lived to “check on her.”

“There was a huge fight when I came in,” he told the mother. “The guy she was in bed with came at me.”

Christine Mackinday and Thomas have testified that they were asleep when he burst into the home.

Her mother said she immediately called War Machine’s cellphone.

“We got into a fight,” she recalled him telling her. “I had to beat her up.”

She remembered having one thought as she rushed to her daughter’s home: “She’s dead.”

An officer at the scene told her that her daughter was alive at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.

The mother walked into the hospital room and saw a swollen and bruised face that she barely recognized.

“It didn’t look like her,” she testified.

Her daughter urged her not to cry.

“This is done,” the mother said at the time, referring to Christine Mackinday’s relationship with the since ousted fighter, who is now jailed. “This is done.”

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.