Valley Street melee results in trespass, drug charges

Four people are facing charges in connection with a tumultuous fight involving knives, a baseball bat, a BB gun and a bag of heroin that broke out in an apartment on Valley Street late Friday evening.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20120919/NEWS02/709199895

Valley Street melee results in trespass, drug charges By ERIC FRANCIS HERALD CORRESPONDENT SPRINGFIELD — Four people are facing charges in connection with a tumultuous fight involving knives, a baseball bat, a BB gun and a bag of heroin that broke out in an apartment on Valley Street late Friday evening. Andrew Nieves, 28, of Seymour, Conn., was ordered held for lack of $2,500 bail Monday after he pleaded innocent to felony unlawful trespass into an occupied residence, as well as two counts of misdemeanor unlawful mischief and a simple assault charge in the Windsor County Courthouse in downtown White River Junction. Springfield Police Cpl. Chris Norton said he and several other officers responded to a 911 call Friday and arrived outside the apartment building at 84 Valley St. to find Nieves cradling his right arm, which had sustained a deep cut he said was a result of having been beaten with a baseball bat. Nieves, a doughnut shop employee who travels to Vermont weekly to visit his ex-wife and young daughter, told police that he had gone into the apartment of another ex-girlfriend, Brittany Rogers, 22, and found two men there whom he decided to throw out because he felt they were “drug dealers.” Corporal Norton said Nieves claimed the men, identified as Armani Torres and Andy Soto, both 20, refused to go, instead staying to assault Nieves with a bat. Rogers gave a different account, writing in a sworn statement that Nieves showed up on her porch uninvited and then climbed in through a window, grabbing her son and threatened to take him from the residence before pulling out a BB gun and pointing it at her friends Torres and Soto. Rogers said when the men retreated into a bedroom from the realistic-looking weapon, Nieves kicked the door off its hinges to get to them. Torres, who initially gave his name to police as “Jose Sanchez” with a fake date of birth, was located in the woods out behind the apartment building along with Soto a short time after police arrived. Soto told police that he and Torres, who said he was renting the bedroom in Roger’s apartment, both fought with Nieves after Nieves kicked in the bedroom door. Soto said the pair then “ran for our life” after Nieves allegedly shot Torres twice with the BB gun and then went to the kitchen and began grabbing knives out of a drawer there. “Armani showed me the injuries and I was able to see two small marks that appeared consistent with the wounds a BB gun would produce,” Norton noted in his affidavit which was filed with the court. Police found two knives on the sidewalk out front and then inside they located a silver BB gun on the floor and a packet of white powder which they said appeared to be some kind of narcotic on the floor directly below the window where Nieves entered the apartment. Springfield Police Officer Anthony Moriglioni said that aside from the scuffle inside the apartment, police noted with suspicion that Torres and Soto appeared to have scrambled up and then back down a steep embankment behind the apartment building before the cruisers started arriving. The department’s drug dog, Ozzy, led officers to a bright blue plastic bag that had been hastily stashed under some leaves near the top of the slope. Moriglioni said the bag contained an iPad charger, a stick of deodorant, a hotel door card, and a “large amount” of what appeared to be heroin bindles packaged as though for sale. A short time later, Officer Moriglioni said Ozzy did a search of Torres’ bedroom and “alerted” on a black bag sitting on the mattress which was seized and opened later at the police station where he said it was found to contain ninety small baggies holding a total of nearly three grams of heroin. Officer Larry Muldoon said that, because of the heroin, arrest warrants for both Torres and Soto have been requested though both men remained at large. The fourth person to get in trouble in connection with Friday evening’s events was Corrinna Carr, 36, who is currently awaiting trial on two felony counts of sale of heroin as the result of an undercover sting that was carried out in April of 2011. As part of her pre-trial release conditions, Carr was supposed to be maintaining a 24-hour curfew at her mother’s residence. However, police said that in the midst of their investigation Friday night they found Carr’s car parked near where police had earlier found the blue bag of drugs. In the car they found a note inside “describing the exact location where officers had earlier found the suspected narcotics in the woods.” Officer Muldoon said that Carr was located later in the evening and allegedly confessed that she’d received a call from someone she said she only knew by the name “Boxer” who had given her detailed instructions on where to find the bag and then offered her $50 to go and get it. Muldoon said that Carr told him once she arrived several people at a nearby campfire told her police had already been by and taken what she was looking for. Carr pleaded innocent on Monday afternoon to a misdemeanor count of violating court-ordered conditions of release and was re-released on pre-trial conditions. http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=RH&Date=20120919&Category=NEWS02&ArtNo=709199895