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DiFazio arrested for violating no-contact order

01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, August 7, 2008

By Donita Naylor

Journal Staff Writer

WESTERLY — Dominic DiFazio, who resigned from the School Committee on May 21 after pleading no contest to a domestic assault charge, was arrested at about 8:30 p.m. Monday on charges of violating a no-contact order and resisting arrest.

He spent Monday night and Tuesday night at Westerly Hospital, said Michael Healey, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office. “He had some kind of scare or medical condition.”

DiFazio’s lawyer, Michael P. Lynch, said his client went to the hospital for reasons unrelated to the arrest.

DiFazio, 41, has been living with his parents on Pierce Street since Superior Court Judge Stephen P. Nugent in May gave him a year’s suspended sentence and a year’s probation and ordered him to have no contact with his wife. The judge also ordered him to get alcohol counseling and to participate in batterer’s intervention.

Lynch said his client has completed “everything he’s been ordered to do,” got a positive review at his June 24 progress report and was well on his way to getting another positive review Aug. 19 until the police knocked Monday on the Pierce Street door.

At his appearance in Superior Court yesterday, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Regine recommended that DiFazio be held without bail as a probation violator, Healey said, but Nugent set bail at $10,000 with surety, for which DiFazio posted $1,000 and was released. He was given a hearing date of Aug. 19.

The contractor who specializes in home repair, DiFazio has a one-year suspended sentence on a bad-check charge that could be reinstated. He also has six months’ probation on a felony charge of unlawful appropriation resulting from security deposits that were not refunded after a customer waited two months for work to begin. Both require him to stay out of trouble.

dnaylor@projo.com

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