If You Are Attacked On The Street?

If you are attacked on the street, what should you do?


Two worlds collide in Harvard student stabbing case
By Martin Finucane, Associated Press, 4/14/2003 17:44

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) One was a Harvard student walking home after drinking to a reggae beat. The other was a young workingman, relaxing after his shift, hungry for a pizza.

Their paths crossed after midnight in a rundown section of town. They fought. A knife came into play. And now Alexander Pring-Wilson, the Harvard student, is facing a charge of murder.

Pring-Wilson, 25, of Colorado Springs, Colo., pleaded innocent Monday in District Court in the stabbing death of Michael Colono, 18, of Cambridge.

Clad in a dark suit jacket and open-collared shirt, his unshaven face showed no emotion as he was led out of a holding cell in handcuffs.

He was ordered held without bail pending a bail hearing Friday.

Prosecutors say Pring-Wilson stabbed Colono five times early Saturday morning after an argument outside a pizza shop in the city's Riverside section.

Colono was sitting with a man and a woman in a car outside the shop at about 1:45 a.m. when he exchanged words with Pring-Wilson. Prosecutors say the two began fighting after Colono got out of the car.

Colono's friends tried to rush him to a Boston hospital and briefly got lost. Eventually, an ambulance was called. He died at a hospital about 90 minutes after the stabbing. A chest wound was fatal, the medical examiner ruled.

Middlesex district attorney's spokeswoman Emily LaGrassa said prosecutors expected to ask a grand jury to indict Pring-Wilson, the normal procedure in Massachusetts murder cases.

Jeffrey Denner, a prominent Boston attorney defending Pring-Wilson, has staged a spirited defense in the media, beginning a few hours after Pring-Wilson was arrested on Saturday morning. Denner has described Pring-Wilson as a ''gentleman'' with an ''impeccable'' record who acted in self-defense.

At the same time, Colono's family has spoken out, defending him.

A portrait has emerged of men from two different worlds, neither with a criminal record, converging in disaster on a dark street.

Denner has said that Pring-Wilson was with friends, drinking and dancing at a nearby nightclub. A reggae band was playing at the club that night. Pring-Wilson put the friends in a taxi and was beginning to walk to his apartment several miles away in Somerville when he encountered Colono.

Denner won't provide details about the argument that erupted, but he claims that Colono and another man attacked Pring-Wilson and he defended himself with a pocketknife.
''Alexander defended himself. He did not instigate this. He did not pursue it,'' Denner said.

Denner concedes that Pring-Wilson had been drinking that evening, but he denied that it made him more aggressive.

Pring-Wilson's mother, also of Colorado Springs, a former deputy district attorney in Colorado, flew to Cambridge along with Pring's stepfather for the arraignment. Wiping away tears, Cynthia Pring told reporters, ''He's actually a son that would make you very proud.''

Pring-Wilson graduated with honors from Colorado College and was getting a master's at Harvard at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He planned to complete his master's degree this spring and had already been accepted to a number of law schools, his mother said.

About 20 Colono family members attended the arraignment, including his mother and father and four siblings, as well as his girlfriend, who is the mother of their 3-year-old child. Family members sobbed as Pring-Wilson was led into court.

Marcos Colono, one of Michael's brothers, said after the arraignment, ''Everyone's talking about Harvard and all his (Pring-Wilson's) accomplishments. It's irrelevant. Human nature will tell you, smart people still do stupid things.''

''He was walking around drinking and carrying a knife. He should have used better judgment, but he didn't,'' said Marcos Colono.

Colono said his brother was a high school dropout who had earned his GED. He was working as a cook at a Boston hotel.

''He was a really humble guy. He worked full-time. He loved pizza. He loved renting movies, which kept him in the house a lot,'' said Marcos Colono.

Michael Christopher, manager at Tavern on the Charles, where Colono worked, said Colono was well-liked and respected. He was working a Friday night shift that would have ended at about midnight.

''He was a gentleman, a gentle man,'' he said. ''It's hard for us to believe what we're reading in the papers about him starting this.''

Cambridge Mayor Michael Sullivan acknowledged that there might be tensions between residents of the city, which includes enclaves of working class people, and students of the world-renowned university.

''Invariably, you get some issues,'' he said. But he said serious conflicts were rare.

Harvard spokesman Joe Wrinn said ''there is tension in any university city to some level between the town and the gown. That's true on every college campus.''

But he also said ''nothing whatsoever to this degree'' had happened in Cambridge in recent memory and the incident was not reflective of a pattern.


Boston Globe OnLine


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