TERRIBLE BEATING: State Sen. Mark Grisante yesterday stands by his wife Maria, still wearing a hospital band after her pretty face was battered in a fight with Senecas. (
)
A state senator and his wife were jumped by a pair of Seneca Nation businessmen and two women during a wild brawl in a Niagara Falls Indian casino when the lawmaker tried to break up a fight following a black tie gala.
Republican state Sen. Mark Grisanti was punched in the ribs and back of the head, and his wife, Maria Grisanti, was beaten so severely about her head and face that she had to seek medical attention after the Friday-night fracas after the Seneca Diabetes Foundation’s Chairman’s Ball.
Grisanti told The Post he stumbled into trouble as he and his family walked into a lobby bar at the Seneca Niagara Casino and saw “these two guys about to go at it.”
Grisanti stepped between them and said, “Hey guys, calm down. This was a nice event. Relax, you just need to calm down.”
“One of them asked me who I was, and when I identified myself, he said I hadn’t done s–t for the Senecas, and punched me in the ribs.”
Grisanti, who was endorsed by the Seneca Nation when he ran for office as a Republican in 2010, said as he began to back away, “Suddenly, I get cold-cocked on the side of my head!”
Security guards rushed into the fight and yanked the men apart, but Grisanti noticed his wife, 5-foot-1, 105-pound Maria, on her back straddled by a large woman bashing her head into the floor.
“This woman was probably a foot taller and twice her weight,” Grisanti said.
“It looked like a [Mixed Martial Arts] fight — the woman was slamming [Maria’s] head on ground probably 20 times; she was getting dizzy and delirious.
“She told me she could literally hear the hair being ripped from her head.”
Maria Grisanti later told her husband that she intervened because she saw him getting hit in the head and dragged away by security.
“She said, ‘What’s going on! That’s my husband!’ At that point they took her down,” he said.
She suffered bruises to her face and head, but luckily escaped serious harm, according to an MRI taken yesterday.
Niagara Falls police refused to provide any further information about the harrowing incident.
Grisanti’s daughter was singing at the black-tie event with a Las Vegas variety act called the Scintas.
She was joined by her parents and their friends as they retired to the casino’s downstairs to toast her performance.
Seneca Nation of Indians President Robert Odawi Porter disavowed any ties with men in the melee and offered his apologies to the Grisantis.
“The Seneca Nation has no formal ties to the Diabetes Foundation, nor does Seneca Gaming Corp., and therefore no direct connection to the events that occurred Friday night after the Foundation’s gala,” he said.