A Manhattan grand jury today cleared a Lower East Side man of charges that he brutally choked a female cop who’d caught him smoking a joint in a project hallway in November.
Grand jurors voted not to indict Pedro Urena, 27, on the choking charge, his lawyer, Rick Pasacreta, told The Post shortly after this afternoon’s vote. But Urena has been indicted on additional felony assault charges for allegedly causing some other injury to an officer during his arrest, the lawyer said.
Urena had taken the stand to personally tell grand jurors that he never choked Officer Temeisha Hoyte as he was being arrested inside Lillian Wald Houses on Avenue D on Nov. 23. Hoyte had claimed she’d been so severely choked by Urena, that she suffered injuries that might prevent her ever working again.
“He says he didn’t touch her, and her partner [identified in court papers as Officer Renee-Maria Sampson] never testified anything about choking,” when the case went before a judge at a preliminary hearing in late November, the lawyer said.
“There was no indication of any struggling,” based on the partner’s testimony, the lawyer said.
“The partner said only that my client was pulling away and that he twisted her arm — she said nothing about anyone being choked,” the lawyer said.
Prosecutors have yet to say which cop — Sampson or Hoyte — Urena has been charged with assaulting. Urena has additionally been charged with resisting arrest.
Urena was busted Nov. 23 after Sampson and Hoyte stopped him for allegedly smoking a joint in a stairwell of the Lillian Wald Houses on Avenue D. He was charged with felony assault for allegedly intentionally causing physical injury to Hoyt.