Grand jury may hear more evidence in child abuse case

Molly Ball

Thursday, Dec. 23, 2004 | 11:06 a.m.

A Clark County grand jury may have to reconvene to hear more evidence about a former Metro Police officer accused of burning his 13-year-old son with a hot iron.

Vincent D'Angelo was indicted on one felony count of child abuse almost a year ago, but his lawyer, Dominic Gentile, claims the teenager has a sealed juvenile record from Family Court that, if opened, could damage the prosecution's case and lead the jury to question the boy's credibility.

District Judge John McGroarty ruled that if Gentile can convince the juvenile judge to unseal the record, the case will go back to the grand jury.

The record's contents are secret, but Gentile wrote in a court filing that it contains a doctor's evaluation that the boy suffered emotional problems.

The boy's parents have been in a bitter custody battle since 2003 after D'Angelo was alleged to have harmed their son.

D'Angelo had been an officer for six years with Metro's Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E., unit, which tours schools teaching children how to say no to narcotics.

After a police internal investigation and hearing, D'Angelo was fired from the force last month, Metro Labor Relations Director Mike Snyder said. D'Angelo had been suspended without pay since the indictment was handed down in January.

The indictment stems from an incident Oct. 2, 2003, when the teen went to school -- a private middle school where he was a seventh grader -- with two black eyes and an iron-shaped burn mark on one arm, according to the transcript of the grand jury proceedings in December 2003 and January 2004.

The burn was so deep that the steam holes in the bottom of the iron left a clear imprint, according to testimony.

The boy testified that his father told him to iron his shirt for school, but then became enraged when he learned the teen had put the iron back in its drawer while still hot.

Grabbing the iron, D'Angelo told the boy, " 'You ... endangered my whole family,' " the boy testified.

"And then I said I didn't think it was that hot, and then he said, and then he burned me," the boy testified.

D'Angelo then slapped him hard across the face about 15 times, the teen said.

But at the hearing, a psychologist, Lewis Etcoff, said the boy was deeply troubled and couldn't be counted on to remember things accurately.

D'Angelo portrayed his own actions as those of a kind but firm father and the iron burn as an accident.

"I said ... what are you doing, why did you put the iron in the drawer with the cord. We never do that. We put it out on the kitchen counter to cool," D'Angelo testified. "And he says to me, in a way like a teenager, 'I didn't think it was hot,' and I said,'You didn't think it was hot, get in here.' "

D'Angelo said he was holding the iron in one hand when the teen barreled past with his arms in the air, knocking the iron away. D'Angelo said he fumbled for the iron to keep it from falling on the head of one of his young daughters and then shoved the son into the couch away from danger.

In the process, D'Angelo was also severely burned on the forearm. Photographs presented at the hearing showed the injury.

The boy "made no mention that he had been burned ... or it would have been immediately explained to him or attended to," the former policeman said.

D'Angelo told the grand jury the abuse allegation was a product of the custody battle. The boy had spent alternate weeks with each parent since the age of 3.

D'Angelo added that his son "has no malicious heart in him. He's merely a puppet to another agenda. He's a loving boy trying to please everybody."