IN IT TOGETHER: Teresa Soler, the EMT attacked by sloshed prosecutor Michael Jaccarino (above), thanks fellow EMT Betty Higdon for her support yesterday. (David McGlynn)
IN IT TOGETHER: Teresa Soler (right), the EMT attacked by sloshed prosecutor Michael Jaccarino (inset), thanks fellow EMT Betty Higdon for her support yesterday. (
)
Some two dozen angry uniformed city emergency workers packed a Manhattan courtroom yesterday as a Brooklyn prosecutor took a no-jail plea for drunkenly assaulting a female EMT who was just trying to help him.
“I have no memory of that night . . . no memory of being in the ambulance,” Assistant District Attorney Michael Jaccarino, 30, told a judge as he took his plea, which his lawyer said will result in his being fired from the Brooklyn DA’s Office.
“That’s what makes this so difficult,” he told Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Melissa Crane, who ordered him to serve 10 days’ community service and complete an alcohol program over the next six months.
“That being said,” Jaccarino continued, “I am accepting full responsibility. It’s not going to happen again.”
He added, “I feel absolutely horrible and devastated by what happened.”
The victim, Teresa Soler, 46, of Yonkers, had told cops that Jaccarino was so violent that night, as he was picked up stumbling drunk on the Brooklyn Bridge, that she thought she was going to die as he jammed his forearm into her throat trying to escape from the moving ambulance.
Emergency workers had hoped for felony charges, none less so than Soler herself, who said the assault will have a lasting effect on EMTs’ confidence in the judicial system’s ability to protect them as they treat belligerent drunks in the future.
She also didn’t buy Jaccarino’s courtroom display of remorse.
“I’m not buying it. It didn’t look sincere; it didn’t sound sincere,” Soler said outside court. “He’s been an upright citizen 20 years? So have I. Where is my justice?”
Jaccarino is an embarrassment to the legal system, she said.
But prosecutors said the misdemeanor disposition was arrived at after a lengthy, detailed investigation — involving interviews with police witnesses, the victim’s partner, the victim herself, and bartenders who had served Jaccarino that night.
Prosecutor Sherita Walton told the judge her office’s investigation “revealed that the defendant was intoxicated to such an extent that it would be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted intentionally, which is required to sustain the instant felony charge.”
Prosecutors took into account Jaccarino’s clean record, she said.
“He is paying the price. He is no longer going to be an assistant district attorney, I can assure everyone in this courtroom of that,” Jaccarino’s lawyer, Gary Farrell, said.
The Brooklyn DA’s Office would not confirm it had taken action beyond suspending the prosecutor.