The Gloucester man who faces charges of attempted murder, assault and battery and sexual assault stemming from a party and subsequent brawl on Harvard Street earlier this month lost his bid for potential freedom Friday.
The hearing for Garth "Pinky" Ramos, which began Tuesday, was presided over by Judge Richard Mori, and ended Friday with Mori returning the 23-year-old to Middleton Jail without bail.
Mori heard testimony from witnesses to the April 6 brawl that ended with a man and a woman rushed to the hospital for treatment of stab wounds.
"All I heard was people yelling, screaming, ambulances, cops," the 23-year-old man who was stabbed during the melee had testified.
He and a 21-year-old woman were stabbed after a house party at 15 Harvard St. turned into a brawl on the sidewalk outside. The man said he left work to go with the woman to the party.
About 10 minutes after they arrived, the male stabbing victim said, Ramos asked him why the woman was with someone "like him." He said Ramos then groped the woman, and the woman said she yelled out.
The man said he tried to hit Ramos, but instead hit fellow partygoer Donge Sanon, 20, who struck back and is also facing assault charges.
As the fight forced him out the door, the man said he fell onto the sidewalk and the other men laid into him, kicking and punching.
The man said he didn't know he was stabbed until he saw blood. He also said he didn't see who stabbed him. The woman, meanwhile, was stabbed as she tried to get between the crowd and the male victim. She said she didn't see who stabbed her either.
The man was stabbed three times in the back. The woman, who entered the courtroom on crutches, was stabbed in the lower back, three inches deep, according to the police report.
Police arrested Ramos, Sanon, Corey James, 20, William Garcia, 23, and Mark Mitchell, 21, on charges of assault and battery.
Detective Jeremiah Nicastro said Ramos' clothes were soaked in blood when police arrived, according to the report. The two knife victims were transported by the Fire Department's Rescue Squad to Beverly Hospital. There, they provided statements to Massachusetts State Police investigators.
Ramos told police who came to the scene that he had tried to stop four white males from beating and stabbing the couple. Ramos, who is black, was allegedly nervous, according to police. And when Nicastro began to search him, he tried to stop the search. Ramos was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct.
Nicastro said Ramos allegedly handed the knife off to Garcia, who told officers he did not know anyone had been stabbed. But Garcia gave the knife to the woman host of the party, who told police she wrapped the knife in a plastic bag, then in a sweatshirt, and tossed it into the Annisquam River.
Police, Nicastro said, have not found the knife. However, one knife, he said, is missing from the home's butcher block set.
Prosecutors asked for the dangerousness hearing Tuesday during the original bail hearing for Ramos. A dangerousness hearing allows the state to hold a suspect in custody as a danger to the community, even if that person is not a flight risk, or likely to leave the area to avoid coming to court.
Bail is usually the means of ensuring that a defendant goes to his or her court appearances, but it is possible for a defendant to be declared not a flight risk but still a threat to the community.
Ramos was returned to Middleton Jail after Friday's hearing and pending his next court date.
Stephanie Bergman may be contacted at 978-283-7000 x3451 or sbergman@gloucestertimes.com.
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