A Vallejo man was sentenced to three years in state prison
Friday morning after pleading guilty to intimidating his wife, whom
prosecutors believe he ran over with his truck causing severe
injuries to her body last fall.
San Jose – A Vallejo man was sentenced to three years in state prison Friday morning after pleading guilty to intimidating his wife, whom prosecutors believe he ran over with his truck causing severe injuries to her body last fall.
Alfred R. Digiandomenico’s guilty plea was in exchange for dropping a charge of assault with a deadly weapon related to the Sept. 9 incident on Old Monterey Road near the El Toro Fire Station.
According to police reports, the assault began when Digiandomenico, 38, and his wife, Dianna, 44, were moving a portable building from near the fire station. The couple started arguing, and somehow, during the argument, as Digiandomenico drove away in a Ford F350, Dianna was knocked over or fell down and was run over by the truck, injuring her hips, legs, lower abdomen and ribs.
As she lay in the road, Digiandomenico said, he saw her in the rearview mirror, got out of the truck, ran back to her, then returned to the truck to put it in park. He then went back to his wife and attempted to move her into the truck to take her to the hospital, though she told him not to move her, according to testimony.
Dianna was hospitalized for approximately two months because of the severity of the injuries. She said, however, the whole incident was “a tragic accident” and that her husband was acting as they have agreed he would, when he gets angry and they argue: going away or driving away instead of hitting her.
Digiandomenico remained in jail on $250,000 bond after his arrest for the alleged assault.
Assistant District Attorney James Gibbons-Shapiro said Friday that a plea was agreed to because Digiandomenico would still serve time in prison for the intimidation charge.
“The defense had offered to plead to this charge given that it was a strike and he would be serving a prison sentence,” Gibbons-Shapiro said. “Given the risks inherent in any trial, this was a way to hold him accountable to what he had done.”
California has a “three strikes” law that guarantees criminals who have committed two serious or violent crimes to be sentenced to 25 years to life if they are convicted of any third felony.
“Mr. Digiandomenico will serve three years in state prison; he was advised on the record that if he should commit another felony offense, it would be his third strike,” said Gibbons-Shapiro.
Digiandomenico served 10 years in state prison on a domestic violence charge long before he met his wife; when they met in Missouri, she said, he was on parole for theft charges.
Digiandomenico lied to police officers when he was questioned immediately after the accident. A witness had described seeing the couple arguing minutes before the accident; Digiandomenico told police, according to the report, that his wife was in the bed of the pickup and fell out as he started driving and then was run over.
One week after the accident, on Sept. 16, Digiandomenico was again interviewed by police, and he told them he had lied before because he didn’t want “contact with police” because of his earlier brushes with the law. He then told Morgan Hill police detectives that Dianna was not in the bed of the truck, but next to the truck, they were arguing, and he began to drive away. He said he didn’t realize she had fallen, nor that he had run over her; she said she stumbled, and the wide rear wheel wells of the truck knocked her down so that her lower body was run over by the truck.
