Judge orders Vallejo man to stand trial for driving over his
wife in Morgan Hill
San Martin – A Vallejo man will stand trial for an alleged assault on his wife in Morgan Hill last September, a judge ruled Monday, plus an additional charge of intimidating a witness, namely, his wife.
Though a domestic violence charge was dropped, the assault with a deadly weapon charge held and the other added, as Alfred R. Digiandomenico, 38, listened to the completion of the preliminary hearing phase of his trial Monday.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Susan Bernardini ruled there is sufficient evidence in the case to proceed to trial, and Digiandomenico will be arraigned Dec. 5 at 8:30am.
“This is a close call,” Bernardini said in court Monday morning of the decision to go forward with the trial. “This is the preliminary hearing, however, I want to say that a lot of things can be true at the same time. I can’t overlook the kind of injuries she suffered, and putting it all together as the police officers did, there’s something.”
Though exactly what happened to put Digiandomenico in jail on $250,000 bond is a part of the trial, there are basic facts about what happened on Sept. 9 on Old Monterey Road near the El Toro Fire Station.
Digiandomenico and his wife, Dianna, 44, were moving a portable building from near the fire station when they began arguing. 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 and got out of the truck, ran back to her, then back to the truck again to put it in park. He then ran back 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.
The victim herself, who was released from the hospital at the end of October, said the whole incident was “a tragic accident.” She said 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 has a history of violence according to his wife and Assistant District Attorney James Gibbons-Shapiro. He 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 from theft charges.
“I believe his prior domestic charges made [police] think they had sufficient reason to do an aggressive investigation, making this into something it isn’t,” Dianna said by phone from a relative’s house in Southern California.
The couple married in February 2003; Dianna said “despite what has been said publicly,” the incident was not related to the sex reassignment surgery she had in 2002 in Thailand. Dianna originally told the Times she thought police believed the argument began because Digiandomenico was unaware of her previous male gender.
Gibbons-Shapiro would not address the specific facts of the case, but MHPD Det. Ray Ramos said that her surgery was not a part of the police investigation.
One fact that is clear in the case is that 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.
“The fact that as his wife is laying there in the road, he asks her to lie about what happened, that to me says something, maybe about his consciousness of guilt,” Bernardini said Monday. “Despite the fact that there’s a fire station right there, with paramedics, he’s trying to put her into the truck to take her into the hospital, and she’s telling him not to move her, thinking she’s going to die.”
One week after the accident, 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 MHPD detectives that Dianna was not in the bed of the truck, but beside the truck. He said 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.
Dianna was in a medically-induced coma for most of her nearly two-month stay in the hospital. When she regained consciousness, she wanted to let police know the incident was an accident, she said.
“I tried to tell them, but they just told me that my story didn’t fit any of the scenarios they had run,” she said.
Bernardini listened to testimony from Dianna on Friday; she told the court on Monday she felt Dianna had “credibility issues” and a “selective memory” when it came to remembering clearly the incident versus past domestic issues.
Gibbons-Shapiro, who said a trial date would likely be set for the middle to end of January, did not want to comment on specific issues because he does not want to sway a potential jury pool.
“It is always my concern that anything I say to the press at this stage of the game holds the potential to sway a potential jury pool, so I don’t comment on the facts of a case or evidence of a case at this time,” he said Monday.
