NORWALK -- The arraignment of a city teen charged with trying to kill his pregnant girlfriend was temporarily halted at state Superior Court at Norwalk Monday afternoon when pandemonium broke out in a courtroom and a relative of the victim tried to climb a glass partition and get at the defendant.
Judge Bruce Hudock ordered the courthouse's largest courtroom cleared after Judicial Marshal Darren Opper pulled the woman off the partition and angry screams could be heard over the defendant's mother shrieking "That's my baby. That's my baby. He's only 17."
The 12:25 p.m. incident seemed to have been sparked by the cries of defendant Terrence Crawford's mother, who began wailing when he was brought into the courtroom in handcuffs and relatives of the injured teenaged girl became upset at her cries for mercy and understanding.
The girl remains at Norwalk Hospital in intensive care with an punctured lung and numerous knife cuts over her body, her mother said. The fetus appears to have survived the attack.
By the time the court was ordered cleared, a number of marshals had moved to restrain the relatives upset at Crawford.
When Hudock allowed everyone back into the courtroom a little over 10 minutes later, he announced he would jail anyone who disturbed the proceedings.
"Do the smart thing and leave the courtroom if you cannot control yourself," he said, before bringing Crawford out for the second time with as many as 14 marshals standing by.
Crawford, 17, of 9 Armstrong Court, Norwalk, is charged with attempted murder, first-degree assault, and resisting arrest; Hudock ordered his bond be raised from $250,000 to $500,000. The hearing proceeded smoothly and no one was arrested.
The mother of the victim, who is not being named because it would identify her daughter, said Crawford lured her daughter into the woods next to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in order to stab and kill her because she was pregnant with Crawford's baby. She said she was happy that Hudock raised Crawford's bond.
"I think it is crazy and I just want him to pay for what he did," she said.
The case was transferred to the Part A docket at the Stamford courthouse, where more serious crimes in the area are handled.
In numerous police reports contained in Crawford's file, a neighbor called police Saturday night just before 11 p.m. to report that a bleeding girl had been left on the steps of 31 Clay Street.
When police arrived, a resident told police the two young who men carried the girl out of the woods before leaving them near a home, ran down some steps connecting Clay Street with Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
The girl, 16, told the officer that she had just been stabbed by Crawford, her boyfriend and a friend of his in the woods. She had sustained several left side puncture wounds, a cut on the left side of her neck, a cut on her left elbow, cuts on both hands and a cut just above the left side of her buttock, police said.
The girl said she met Crawford and his 17-year-old friend at the South Norwalk train station, where they had just come from Bridgeport. She said Crawford told her he was having trouble with police and they needed to lay low and he took her into the wooded area. She said she told him she was pregnant with his baby.
That is when Crawford and his friend began hitting her.
"Terrence must have had a knife because I realized I was stabbed where Terrence was hitting me," she said in a statement to police.
Crawford's friend, who is not being identified because he is 17, told police Crawford was talking about killing his girlfriend because she is pregnant, but he thought he was kidding. Crawford told the friend that he "don't want no damn baby," the friend's told police; as they were standing next to the woods, Crawford told her he needed to talk to her.
"As he began walking in the woods with her I saw him begin to pull a knife out of his jeans. I thought to myself he is really going to stab her. A couple of minutes later I heard her screaming really loud. She was yelling, "it hurts" and "I'm bleeding," his statement said.
After the girl was brought to the Clay home and the call went out for the stabbing, police officers traveling from the police department on Monroe Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive saw two young men.
The pair began to run when police got close and began questioning them. Crawford ran north on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and, after a brief foot chase that ended after at least one officer pulled his service weapon, Crawford was placed in handcuffs.
The arresting officer noticed Crawford had cuts on his right hand and blood on his clothes and body.
He told the officers, "I didn't do anything. I gotta check on my girl." Then he said, "It's my girl's blood. I tried to carry her from the woods. I gotta see if my girl's OK," a police report by the arresting officer said.
2 months ago
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