Hughes reasserts self-defense claim
Deliberations expected Monday after state rests its case in murder trial
Joey Gingerella, a sociable guy known affectionately as “Jo Jo Nice,” invited Dante Hughes to play pool as closing time approached at Ryan’s Pub in Groton on Dec. 11, 2016.
“We didn’t get a chance to play,” Hughes testified Friday at his murder trial in New London Superior Court.
Life, and then death, got in the way.
Hughes spent about three hours on the witness stand explaining why he pulled his Glock 9 mm out of his back pocket, aimed it at Gingerella’s chest and pulled the trigger in the parking lot of the neighborhood bar. He said he thought Gingerella was reaching into his waistband for a gun. Gingerella was not armed.
His attorney, Walter D. Hussey, guided him through the story under direct examination before prosecutor Paul J. Narducci attacked it at length under cross-examination.
Hughes testified he’d worked 16 hours that day, first as a flagger at a road construction site in Montville and then as a line cook at Fatboy’s Kitchen and Bar in New London. He said he had one drink, a Crown Royal vanilla whiskey, before leaving Fatboy’s with his girlfriend, Latoya Knight, stopping briefly at his father’s house in Waterford and heading home to Groton. He said he wanted to stop for a drink even though Knight, who testified earlier in the trial that she had been drinking Long Island Iced Tea and Fireball shots, wanted to go home.
But once inside the bar, Hughes said he didn’t have time to drink the bottle of Heineken beer he’d ordered before Knight threw the beer in his face and hit him in the forehead with the bottle. He followed her out to the car and hit her, two or three times, he said, as she sat in the driver’s seat. Gingerella and John Hoyt, asked by the bartender to check on Knight, tried to intervene.
“John’s pulling me this way, Joey’s pulling me that way,” Hughes testified. “He’s saying, ‘Get off her.’ He’s telling me he’ll (expletive) me up.’”
The State Bond Commission on Wednesday is expected to vote on a host of financial commitments that include $20 million for the Electric Boat submarine building facility in Groton.
EB is expected to receive $28 million total in grants-in-aid — $20 million in aid for its facility in Groton and $8 million for workforce training programs for EB and its supply chain in eastern Connecticut.
Electric Boat will use $20 million to help finance dredging to support the launches of new submarines, as well as a manufacturing superstructure being built to support new submarine construction, according to a joint statement from local state Reps. Christine Conley and Joe de la Cruz.
The Bond Commission also is expected to approve $750,000 to the Connecticut Port Authority for preliminary design for structural and utility improvements at Pier 7 at Fort Trumbull State Park in New London. The pier is used by the Coast Guard, Navy and visiting vessels.
The state Department of Education is expected to receive money to provide $594,017 to the Integrated Day Charter School in Norwich for debt repayment and building upgrades and $85,500 to C.B. Jennings Elementary School in New London for unspecified site, technology or equipment upgrades.