Dobbs Ferry man gets six years in prison for assaulting two teens
A 63-year-old Dobbs Ferry man who assaulted two teenagers — throwing one through a restaurant window — has been sentenced to six years in state prison, the Westchester District Attorney's Office announced.
Vincent Pappas got the promised sentence Thursday for his guilty plea to first- and third-degree assault in the Sept. 29, 2022, attack at the restaurant on Main Street.
He was also sentenced to one year in the county jail for a misdemeanor conviction for aggravated harassment as a hate crime. For nearly three months before the restaurant attack, Pappas repeatedly threatened and harassed a 13-year-old Hispanic boy on Main Street, telling him he hated Guatemalans and would kill the boy if he didn't leave the country, according to the District Attorney's Office.
“We are holding this defendant accountable for his vicious attack on two teenagers and his repeated anti-Hispanic hate directed at a young boy," District Attorney Mimi Rocah said in a statement. "While the teenagers have been able to recover from their physical injuries, all three victims continue to deal with the trauma inflicted by this defendant.”
On the day of the assault, according to court documents, Pappas followed the two 15-year-olds into the restaurant. He made a crude remark that he suggested to police later might have been a reference to something one of the boys had said to him a different time.
He then knocked one of the boys to the floor with a punch to the face. As he kept punching him, the other boy tried to intervene. Pappas shoved him through the restaurant's glass window and resumed punching the first victim until he was able to get up and run out.
That victim suffered minor injuries, including head swelling and pain to his face, jaw, chest and thighs. The boy who was thrown through the window suffered a puncture wound to the chest, a collapsed lung, a cervical spine fracture and bleeding on his head and hands.
Following the assault, Pappas allegedly told detectives that he was looking to get even with one of the boys after a series of run-ins.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Dobbs Ferry NY man gets six years in prison for assault
