Stamford man charged with punching woman in laundromat

STAMFORD — After months of looking, police have arrested a city man and charged him in connection with an assault at a West Side laundromat last December.

Police said the man punched a woman in the face, breaking her nose while her young son looked on.

Rogelio Morales-de la Cruz, 33, of Woodland Place, was charged Wednesday with second-degree assault, conspiracy to commit second-degree assault, risk of injury to a child and disorderly conduct, police said. He was also charged with two counts of failure to appear in court for allegedly skipping court dates in two other criminal matters and was ordered held in lieu of $100,000 bond.

According to his three-page arrest affidavit, police were sent to Danny’s Laundromat on West Main Street on Dec. 9 on the report of two men attacking a woman. When police got there they found a woman bleeding heavily from the nose and her husband with a bleeding right hand and one of his finger’s broken, the affidavit said.

The woman said she was in the laundromat with her husband and 12-year-old son when Morales-de la Cruz and his cousin came into the business and began doing laundry. After drying their clothes and putting them into a bag, the woman said the cousin grabbed her by the arms, at which point her husband was able to push him away, according to the arrest document.

The cousin said he would kill the woman’s husband, pushed him to the floor and began choking the man, according to the affidavit. When the husband held up one of his hands to the cousin’s face the cousin bit down on one of his fingers, the affidavit said.

When the woman tried to break up the two, she said Morales-de la Cruz punched her in the face with a closed fist, the affidavit said.

She told her son to call police and de la Cruz, his cousin and another woman fled the laundromat, police said. Police found video inside the laundromat that corroborated the woman’s story and they were able to get a picture of Morales-de la Cruz, which the woman positively identified as the person who struck her, the affidavit said.

Hospital records show that the woman suffered a broken nose, the affidavit said.