WESTFIELD – A determination of whether or not a city man will be tried in Hampden Superior Court was postponed Friday when Judge Philip A. Beattie allowed a motion for a continuance to allow the defendant’s lawyer additional time to prepare his defense.
The case stems from a Dec. 9, 2013, incident in which a city woman claimed that the man had assaulted and kidnapped her in her Southwick Road apartment.
Officer Michael Csekovsky reports, in a court document, that he responded to the station after the alleged victim went there to complain about her on-again, off-again, boyfriend.
Csekovsky reports that the woman told him that the man, Ryck Crabtree, 23, of 19 Sackett St., had come to her apartment and an argument developed.
The woman told him that the man refused to leave when she asked him to and, when she said she was going to call police, took her car keys and cellphone.
She told Csekovsky that when she tried to take another phone from the kitchen table to call police the man also took that phone.
She said that Crabtree “pushed her against a wall and put his hands around her throat” Csekovsky reports.
The victim said that the man would not allow her to leave the apartment for at least an hour after the assault began and she said that “she was trapped in the bathroom as Ryck was blocking the exit to the bathroom and refused to let her out.”
She said that she was eventually able to leave the apartment when she agreed to drive him to an Elm Street drug store.
Once Crabtree entered the store, the woman said, she immediately drove to the police station to report the crime.
Crabtree was located at a relative’s Sackett Street home and arrested on charges of assault and battery in a domestic relationship, intimidating a witness and kidnapping.
When he was arraigned in Westfield District Court before Judge Paul M. Vrabel on Dec. 10, Crabtree was held in lieu of $5,000 cash bail.
A district court can impose a sentence of no more than two and a half years so, since the kidnapping charge allows for a sentence of as much as ten years imprisonment, trial in Hampden Superior Court is an option.
A hearing to consider dismissing the charge in district court so the case could be heard in superior court was rescheduled on Friday for Feb. 7.
