Correctional officer said severe concussion caused memory loss.
SPRINGFIELD – Joseph Giannetti described for jurors Thursday how Roland Ellison hit him from behind four or five times on the head before he lost consciousness and slipped from his chair to the floor.
Giannetti, a correctional officer at the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow, said he had both hands up trying to protect his head after Ellison – an inmate there – stepped up into the guard station while he was on the telephone calling his supervisor.
“The next I remember is being treated by medical down the hall,” Giannetti testified on the witness stand in the Hampden Superior Court trial of Ellison and co-defendant Alex Gonzalez.
Sheriff Michael J. Ashe previously called the assault the worst instance of an officer injured at the hands of an inmate in the last 20 years.
Assistant District Attorney Howard I. Safford showed Giannetti pictures taken of him, bloody and wounded, after the attack.
Giannetti said the pictures were of him, but he has no recollection of the time period in which they were taken. He said the first time he saw himself most of the blood was cleaned off him.
A few times during his testimony, Giannetti said he didn’t remember certain things that happened Jan. 5, 2011, due to the severe concussion, among other injured, he suffered in the attack that day.
Jurors in the trial before Judge Constance M. Sweeney saw – several times including once in slow motion – a recording of the event made by a stationary camera in the “pod” or section of the jail.
From that camera Ellison, 32, of Springfield, can be seen going into the partially-walled officers station and hitting downwards repeatedly.
Ellison is charged with assault and battery on a correctional officer, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and two counts of threat to commit a crime.
The dangerous weapon in the second charge is a metal grate. The grate was a fixed part of shelving in the office, and the charge is that Giannetti was injured with the grate when Ellison hit him into it.
Co-defendant Alex Gonzalez, 21, is charged in a joint venture with Ellison for the two assault charges. He is not accused of touching Giannetti but of planning with, and assisting Ellison in, the assault.
At the time of the assault, Ellison was awaiting trial on weapons and assault charges. He pleaded guilty to some of those charges in June 2011 and was sentenced to 7½ to 10 years in state prison for those.
Giannetti was the only correction officer staffing the pod when the 2 p.m. attack happened, where 20 or 30 inmates were present with all others from the pod in classes elsewhere.
Giannetti said when all inmates were in the pod he was the only uniformed correctional officer for the about 70 inmates housed there.
A counselor who is also a correctional officer was in her office in the pod and came out and yelled at Ellison to stop, as well as triggering alerts to other jail staff about the problem.
Giannetti also had a fracture to the left cheek, two staples in the back of his head, a fractured rib and lacerations in his forehead. He spent two days in Baystate Medical Center.
The trial is scheduled to resume Friday.