After a standoff Sunday, Bennington police arrested a man who was wanted on a charge of attempted murder and who had eluded police for several days.
Zachary Dumas, 37, appeared Monday afternoon in Bennington County Superior criminal court in Bennington and pleaded not guilty to the attempted second-degree murder charge, as well as a count of assault and robbery with injury.
Judge Kerry Ann McDonald-Cady granted a request from Alexander Burke, a deputy state’s attorney in Bennington County and the prosecutor in the case, to hold Dumas without bail while the charges against him are pending.
Frederick Bragdon, a public defender representing Dumas, told the judge he did not object to his client being held without bail.
The incident leading to the charges allegedly took place on Sept. 7, when a woman reported around 10:30 a.m. that she had been strangled by Dumas and that he had stolen her backpack, which contained money, identification cards and debit cards, according to an affidavit written by James Macaulay, a Bennington police officer.
The woman reported that Dumas, whom she said she had only recently met, then left the residence, Macaulay wrote. The woman told police that Dumas had strangled her for about a minute and that she lost consciousness.
According to the affidavit, the woman told police she “thought she was going to die and that she would never see her children again while she was being strangled.”
The woman reported that when she woke up on the ground she started to scream, and that’s when Dumas took her backpack and fled, the affidavit stated.
She also told police that when Dumas first arrived at the residence he was asking her for money so he could buy drugs, Macaulay wrote in the affidavit.
Police sought a warrant for Dumas’ arrest, which was granted on Sept. 8, according to court records.
Around 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 14, police said, authorities received a tip that Dumas was at a residence on Pleasant Street.
Police said they went to the residence and made contact with Dumas, who fled up a flight of stairs and locked himself in an apartment. Police said authorities surrounded the building and waited for the renter to come to the scene with a key to the apartment.
After obtaining the key, police said, they went into the apartment. Dumas dove out of a second-story window and leaped onto a rooftop and then onto a garage before jumping over a fence and getting away.
He was tracked, according to police, to a neighborhood where authorities said they again made contact with him, but again he was able to flee.
Then, around 6:45 p.m. on Sunday, police said they received a tip that Dumas was seen riding a bike on Gage Street. Police said they tracked him to a residence on Division Street, went to the door and saw him inside. He went out a second-story window and, for a period of time, was on the roof of the building, where he could see that the place had been surrounded by authorities, police said.
After getting a warrant to go into the building, police said, authorities made several announcements calling on Dumas to exit the residence. Police said they attempted to enter the residence around 9 p.m. but were delayed as Dumas had “fortified” the doors to the building.
Police said they eventually were able to get into the building and take Dumas into custody.
If convicted of the attempted murder charge alone, Dumas faces up to life in prison.
