WESTFIELD – Two city men have been arraigned on assault charges after two victims reported a vicious and apparently premeditated assault early Thursday morning.
Capt Michael McCabe said Thursday morning that an Elizabeth Avenue resident returning home with her new boyfriend arrived to see her former boyfriend, and a friend of his, parked in his pickup truck across the street from her home.
When her new boyfriend parked, she later told police, her former boyfriend, Ryan Pasquini-Pezzini, 22, of 27 Francis St., and his friend, Zachary A. Holder, 23, of 27 Francis Street, ran across the street, pulled her boyfriend from his car, and assaulted him.
Officer David Burl was the first to arrive at the scene and reports that when the two assailants began to beat her boyfriend, kicking him and striking him with metal pipes, the young woman ran to her former boyfriend’s pickup and started blowing the vehicle’s horn in an effort to attract attention to the assault.
Burl was told that the two suspects then returned to the truck and drove away, with the woman still inside.
The victim told police that the two men assaulted her while she was in the truck before pushing her from the vehicle on East Mountain Road.
When Sgt. Jeffrey Baillargeon arrived at Elizabeth Avenue he found a pair of shoes and a purse in the driveway and began a search of the area for the owner of the property.
He found the female victim walking back to her home, barefoot. An ambulance was summoned and she was transported to Noble Hospital for treatment of injuries she sustained.
The victim’s car was damaged during the attack, a rear-view mirror was ripped from the car and tires were flattened.
Officers searching the area seized as evidence an eight-foot-long metal pipe believed to have been used in the assault but the male victim was not immediately found.
As the man is a Southwick resident, officers from that department were asked to check the man’s home but they could not find him either and he was not found until after 3:30 a.m. when he made a phone call.
The victim told police that, after being struck on his head with a pipe, he woke up in a wooded area a few houses away from the scene of the attack. He said that he believed he had been in the woods for hours.
He, too, was transported to the hospital.
Both victims were treated and subsequently released from the hospital after treatment of cuts and bruises which McCabe said were consistent with their accounts of the incident.
Both suspects were positively identified by the victims.
Warrants issued for both men were executed Thursday afternoon, police report, when both suspects were found at Holder’s home on Francis Street.
When officers knocked on the front door at 27 Francis St., the suspects left the house by a side door but were taken into custody and arrested.
Both were arraigned, before Judge Philip A. Contant in Westfield District Court on charges of assault and battery and malicious damage to a motor vehicle. In addition, both men were charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, Holder with two counts of the charge and Pasquini-Pezzini with one.
Both were held without right to bail pending dangerousness hearings scheduled for May 28.
