Diligent police work led Edgartown police to the man who assaulted Stephen Caliri, 63, the owner of the Victorian Inn, late last Friday night in Edgartown, after Mr. Caliri confronted a man urinating in the parking lot of the elegant inn on South Water Street.
Edgartown Police Detective Sergeant Chris Dolby said police will seek charges of assault and battery, assault and battery on an elder and trespassing against Peter Mara, 33, of Hingham.
Mr. Mara was one of a group of intoxicated men in Edgartown that night for a bachelor party who went into the back parking lot of the inn, according to a police report, where the confrontation occurred that sent Mr. Caliri to the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital for treatment of his injuries, which included a fractured nose, cuts, and bruises. The men ran off when Karyn Caliri heard the commotion and ran to help her husband, who was on the ground and being pummeled by Mr. Mara, according to the police report.
The identification of Mr. Mara and his friends began with the discovery of a blue “Hurley” baseball cap and pair of “Havaianas” flip-flops one of the men left behind when he fled. Detective Dolby recognized the hat as the one worn by a man he had seen the night before in the Seafood Shanty restaurant. Based on the description provided by the Caliris, police viewed the restaurant security tape and identified a man paying his bill who was with a group that included the man wearing the hat. That man told police that another member of the group had gotten in trouble and been arrested. A check of police logs led police to William “Denny” Grant, one of the group, who was arrested for disorderly conduct. Police later learned that Mr. Mara had bailed Mr. Grant from jail. His photo on the Registry of Motor Vehicles database matched the description of the assailant, police said.
Police conversations with all three men in the parking lot that night described a night of drinking. Police reached Mr. Mara at his home in Hingham and asked him to return to the Vineyard for a conversation. “I showed Mara the blue hat and flip-flops and asked him if they belonged to him and he said yes they were his,” Detective Sergeant Dolby wrote in his report.