Taser Had No Effect
A frantic call reporting a dispute at the trailer park on Oakview Highway in East Hampton gave rise on Jan. 22 to a bizarre, bloody confrontation between East Hampton Town police and Scott D. Golden, 44, a resident of the park.
The first officer to arrive was greeted by a man with blood all over his hands and clothes, who told him that Mr. Golden was inside the trailer, “out of control and extremely dangerous.” The officer, Joseph R. Montiel, called for backup and looked inside the trailer. Mr. Golden was in the kitchen, leaning over a counter, head down. “The residence was in disarray,” Officer Montiel reported. “All living room furniture had been overturned, and the kitchen and living room floor were covered in glass and blood.”
The officer called out to the man by name, and Mr. Golden raised his head, which, says the report, was dripping with blood from a large cut on his forehead. When the officer spoke to him, he responded with “screams and grunts, and spitting blood.”
As Officer Montiel entered the trailer, Mr. Golden, who was wearing nothing but underwear and a fleece jacket, began moving toward him. His feet and legs were bleeding from walking across a carpet of broken glass that was strewn about the floor, but “he appeared to have no response to pain,” the officer reported.
Just then three more officers burst in. Mr. Golden, screaming, grabbed a large glass vase filled with rocks and beach glass. Officer Montiel ordered him to drop it, but Mr. Golden hurled it at him. The officer ducked and the vase missed its mark, smashing instead through a double-glass window.
The commanding officer, Sgt. John Claflin, then fired an X26 Taser at the enraged man, striking him, but to no effect; the report says he “continued to advance” on the four officers. Officer Montiel then threw himself at Mr. Golden, tackling him, and with the help of the other three got him onto the floor face-down, allowing them to handcuff and shackle him.
Placed in an East Hampton Village ambulance with two of the officers, Mr. Golden continued to spit and kick and writhe against the restraints, police said. The two held him down as the ambulance sped to Southampton Hospital.
Once in the emergency room, the East Hampton officers were joined by a Southampton Village policeman, and the trio kept the combative Mr. Golden under restraint, the report reads. Still under restraints, he was hospitalized.
Southampton Town Justice Andrea Schiavoni arraigned him in the hospital two days later on charges of assault on a police officer and third-degree criminal mischief, both felonies. The delay in arraignment was unusual, but East Hampton police declined to say whether he was in restraints throughout the 48 hours.
The amount of bail could not be determined. Mr. Golden was turned over after arraignment to the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department.
In one other arrest report last week, a defective headlight led to the arrest of an Amagansett woman, 23-year-old Alexandra Colonna, who was charged with misdemeanor possession of alprazolam, a controlled substance similar to Xanax.
Ms. Colonna was driving north on Three Mile Harbor-Hog Creek Road on the evening of Jan. 20 when she was pulled over. An officer smelled marijuana when he went to question her, and found a bag of what police said was the drug, along with five pills of alprazolam. Ms. Colonna was released from the station house with a ticket to appear in court at a future date.