Cary man pleads guilty in machete attack on ex-girlfriend

Neel Salil Mehta, 21, of 602 Halcyon Meadow Drive, pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury. He was sentenced to 157 to 201 months in prison on the attempted murder charge and a consecutive sentence of 59 to 83 months in prison on the assault charge.

Mehta and Priyanka Kumari dated for about a year before she ended the relationship in mid-2016, Wake County Assistant District Attorney Melanie Shekita said. Mehta then began stalking her, prompting Kumari, who was then 18, to block him on social media and on her phone, the prosecutor said.

On Jan. 12, 2017, Mehta took a Lyft to Kumari's Apex neighborhood and waited for her to get off the bus from Holly Springs High School. When she arrived, he started choking her and then pulled out a machete and began slashing her and chopping at her "like someone would cut a coconut," Shekita told Superior Court Judge Michael O'Foghludha.

Horrified neighbors called 911, and Apex police were able to end the attack, which was so brutal that some of the wounds Kumari suffered on her hands as she tried to fend off the attack were deep enough to expose bone.

"The hospital staff said, in 35 years' history, they have not seen such a case survive," Kumari's father, Pankaj Kumar, told O'Foghludha. "She was attempted to be cut in pieces. It will remain with her her entire life."

Shekita said Kumari tried to calm Mehta down during the attack, but he wouldn't listen.

"What you see is someone determined to kill her," she said, calling it "one of the most horrific attacks" she's seen in 20 years as a prosecutor. "There was no stopping him."

Mehta had a notebook in his backpack detailing his anger toward Kumari for ending their relationship.

Defense attorney David Coolidge said Mehta spiraled into drugs after their breakup, which only aggravated underlying mental health problems.

"[It] was more than his system could handle in terms of his impulse control," Coolidge said, adding that Mehta later told psychiatrists that he "couldn't believe himself what had occurred and that he had engaged in that conduct."

O'Foghludha ordered Mehta to undergo mental health and substance abuse treatment while in prison.

Mehta said nothing in court, other than to answer the judge's questions. But his family issued a statement apologizing for his actions, praying for Kumari's recovery and hoping that she and her family can one day forgive Mehta.

Kumari has undergone two surgeries already and needs at least two more for facial reconstruction, Shekita said.

"This is an 18-year-old girl who, like most 18-year-old girls, valued her beauty and valued her looks," Shekita said, noting that her family has removed mirrors from the home so she doesn't have to see herself.

She also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is undergoing therapy. She wasn't in court for Friday's plea hearing because it was too much of an ordeal, Shekita said.

"She is someone that had a bright future about her and [now] doesn't like to go outside the home," she said. "This is something, for her, that will always be on her mind."