Jared Ravizza, the Vineyarder accused of last weekend’s off-Island stabbing spree, has lost his defense lawyer in a separate West Tisbury assault case.
Edgartown attorney Robert D. Moriarty told the Edgartown District Court that his attorney-client relationship with Ravizza had suffered “an irretrievable breakdown.”
Moriarty, who was privately retained, represented Ravizza after the 26-year-old was charged with assault and battery on his father in West Tisbury on April 14. Ravizza was also charged with wrecking his father’s home office.
“There is an irretrievable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship between Mr. Ravizza and I,” Moriarty wrote in his motion to the court. “I am respectfully requesting that I be allowed to withdraw from this case.”
Judge Paul G. Pino approved the request Wednesday. Ravizza is due in Edgartown court on July 22 for his arraignment on the April charges.
The arraignment date was scheduled after Ravizza was removed from a pretrial diversion program on Wednesday that he was supposed to start last month. Diversion programs are intended to resolve low-level criminal cases without a trial, sometimes with counseling and treatment.
“Please be advised that you have been terminated from the Diversion Program,” the notice to Ravizza states.
Ravizza also faces 12 criminal counts in Quincy District Court and Plymouth District Court stemming from his alleged stabbing of four girls in a movie theater in Braintree, and two people in a McDonald’s in Plymouth, last Saturday.
Connecticut State Police have said they are focusing on Ravizza in a homicide investigation of the death of a 70-year-old man found earlier Saturday in Deep River, Conn. He has not been publicly charged, however.
He is currently in custody, and undergoing a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation at Bridgewater State Hospital, a medium-security facility.
