CLEVELAND — This is the second of a two-part series into the hiring practices of the city of Cleveland.
Ellen Dunn rang in the New Year fighting for her life.
Her alleged assailant: her husband, Cardell Boyd.
Prosecutors say Boyd used his hands, a knife, a gas can and finally a pickup truck during his vicious attack at their Euclid home.
"He stabbed me in the back four times. He cut my throat. He stabbed me in the shoulder. He strangled me,” Dunn told The Investigator Tom Meyer.
After jumping out a side window, Dunn’s run for safety was brief. Boyd chased her down and dragged her back.
“After ripping off my clothes, [he] drug me across the cement where he poured gas on top of my head, and then attempted to set me on fire until my neighbor came out and stopped him,” she recalled.
But it wasn’t over. According to Dunn, Boyd got inside his truck and drove across the yard, trying to run her over.
"And he hit the tree there and I managed to jump behind the tree,” she said.
She realizes she’s lucky to be alive.
“Yes…By the grace of God,” she said.
Boyd’s past is violent and littered with felony and misdemeanor convictions. But that rap sheet didn’t deter the city of Cleveland. He was hired in 2014 as a custodian, despite those eight criminal encounters.
Boyd is one of the 445 city workers with a felony conviction on their resume’, according a Channel 3 News analysis of more than 4,500 city workers and court records. The total show one of 10 city workers reviewed have felony records.
Mayor Frank Jackson has repeatedly defended his hiring policy, a program of second chances which forbids job candidates from being asked about felony records. Boyd’s past shows he received more than a second chance. And Dunn said her husband posed a danger to all women.
“He shouldn't have been working around no female, no females at all. Nobody. I mean he's a violent person,” she told Channel 3 News.
What happened to Dunn is strikingly similar to the Lance Mason case. Mason, a former judge who went to prison for attacking his wife, Aisha Fraser, was hired by Jackson’s City Hall in 2017. In the fall, while still working for the city as a minority business administrator, police say Mason attacked his then ex-wife, killing her. He is now jailed and awaiting trial.
In the days after Mason’s arrest, Jackson defended the hiring, pointing out that Mason “won the process” and was amply qualified for the job. He said Mason was afforded a second chance.
While sympathetic for Fraser’s family, Jackson refused to apologize for Mason’s hiring.
“Mayor, you made a mistake. You and City Hall made a mistake by hiring this guy, didn't you?” Meyer asked the mayor during a one-on-one interview last fall.
“No, no. He won a process,” Jackson insisted.
Boyd apparently won the hiring process, too. He now faces six charges, including attempted murder and arson
“I say there’s a process and through that process, people are given jobs and responsibilities,” Jackson said.
Boyd's wife says her husband never should have been hired. He was given more than two chances to turn his life around.
Jackson laughed off the assertion that Boyd received eight chances, one for each conviction dating to the 1990s.
“I can’t argue with his wife. I just know what our policy is,” he said.