Local man arrested by state’s Violent Fugitive Task Force
WOONSOCKET – The state police Violent Fugitive Task Force on Friday captured a city man sought on a laundry list of warrants from two police departments and two courts, including failure to register as a sex offender and mutilating a woman by repeatedly biting her in the face and head earlier this month.
Jose Roger Santiago, 23, was arrested as a result of a joint investigation by the state police, the Woonsocket Police Department and the Lincoln Police Department, said Laura Kirk, a spokeswoman for the state police.
The Lincoln and Woonsocket police departments both had warrants out for Santiago for failure to register as a sex offender. The Sixth District Court had also issued a warrant for Santiago’s arrest for failure to appear for a bail violation hearing on Woonsocket’s charge of failure to register as a sex offender, and the Superior Court had issued another warrant for him for failure to appear for a violation hearing stemming from a separate charge of failure to register as a sex offender lodged against him by the Pawtucket police.
The Woonsocket police also charged Santiago with several new charges stemming from an Aug. 1 attack on his 19-year-old girlfriend in the Social District.
In what police initially thought was a robbery, officers were dispatched to Walgreen’s, where they encountered the woman “screaming hysterically” and bleeding from wounds on her ears and chin.
The woman told police
she’d been arguing with Santiago since the previous night and he forced her to leave their apartment when maintenance workers showed up to fix some damage to the walls.
Santiago allegedly became violent when she told him she wanted him to leave her alone and began walking away on Gaulin Avenue. That’s when he allegedly punched her in the back, lifted her up and slammed her body into the ground, she told police.
As she lay on the pavement, Santiago began punching her in the head and face, then took “several bites” of her chin and left ear, according to police reports.
Then Santiago choked the woman, leaving her gasping for breath, before fleeing with her cell phone and house keys. The woman was later transported to Landmark Medical Center for treatment.
After the Violent Fugitive Task Force took Santiago into custody Friday, he was transferred to the custody of the Woonsocket police for booking on charges stemming from the attack. They include domestic assault by strangulation; mutilation or disabling mayhem; domestic simple assault and battery; domestic disorderly conduct and larceny.
He was transferred to the custody of the Adult Correctional Institutions pending appearances in various courts, according to police reports.
The state’s sex offender registry does not say why Santiago is required to register because the underlying offense occurred when he was a juvenile, police say. But the state's database says he’s classified as a Level II sex offender with a moderate risk of reoffending. His probation expires in January 2020.