>“The wounds are deep,” Assistant District Attorney Stacie Moeser said of the injuries to four men stabbed near a Revere subway station five years ago. “You heard about the operations. You saw the scars.”

Speaking in closing arguments, Moeser urged a Suffolk Superior Court jury to convict ERVIN MEMUSHAJ (D.O.B. 8/22/82), a one-time South Boston resident, of one count of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and three counts of aggravated assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. The victims were a Revere man, then 27, and his Winthrop friends, ages 22, 25, and 26 at the time.

Prosecutors say the victims had attended a party at Club Lido on the night of Feb. 11, 2005, and were headed to their vehicles just before 2 a.m. on Feb. 12 when they encountered the defendant at the Wonderland Station parking lot.

One of the victims recognized Memushaj from an earlier altercation in Cambridge. That victim approached Memushaj and started talking to him. The conversation between the two was calm at first, Moeser said.

“Then it elevated to pushing, and that elevates to punching back and forth,” she told the court.

Memushaj went to his car as the victim’s friends tried to defuse the situation; while the man’s back was turned, Memushaj allegedly stabbed him in the left upper back, then the left abdomen, and stomach.

Not knowing that he had a knife, the other men tried to subdue Memushaj. Each suffered stab wounds to their abdomens as they did so.

“I’ll kill you,” Memushaj allegedly yelled during the conflict.

One of the wounded men punched Memushaj in the head, temporarily subduing him, Moeser said, and causing him to drop the weapon – a bloodstained knife with a fixed three-inch blade – which was later recovered by police.

The victims transported themselves to the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center, from where two were rushed by ambulance to Massachusetts General Hospital and two to Boston Medical Center with serious to critical injuries.

MBTA Transit Police detectives responded to the scene and to the hospitals, gathering physical evidence and taking detailed statements from the victims. Based on the information they developed, Transit Police applied for and received a warrant for Memushaj’s arrest on Feb. 14, 2005.

By then, Moeser said, the defendant had fled the state – first to New York and then to Chicago.

“He went to Chicago and lived [there] under a cloud of lies,” Moeser said. “He was hiding in Chicago so he wouldn’t be held accountable.”

While in Chicago, Memushaj started a new life, Moeser said, and used an alias to apply for jobs and obtain housing, a car, and identification.

In the years that Memushaj remained a fugitive, Moeser led the Grand Jury investigation that resulted in his indictment in absentia by a Suffolk County grand jury. Because of his ties to the Albanian community, police and prosecutors were concerned that Memushaj might have fled the country; they enlisted the assistance of the FBI, which located him in Chicago in November of 2008.

“When you go into the jury room, look at the evidence that stands for itself,” Moeser told jurors, noting the severity of the victims’ injuries as documented on their medical records and the testimony of witnesses who observed the altercation. “Based on the evidence presented to you, I ask you to find the defendant guilty. This was a vicious stabbing. According to common sense and according to the law, there was no excuse.”

Following closing arguments, Judge Patrick Brady instructed jurors on the law. They have since begun their deliberations. If they do not reach a unanimous verdict by this afternoon, they will return to courtroom 815 tomorrow morning.

Michael Coffey is the district attorney’s victim-witness advocate assigned to the case. Memushaj is represented by attorney Timothy Bradl.