Former lightweight boxing champion Paul Spadafora was arrested Wednesday night after he allegedly stabbed his brother during a dispute and then fought with police officers.
In a police report obtained by Megan Guza of TribLive.com, officers say they responded to calls of a domestic violence incident at a home in Pittsburgh shortly after 6 p.m. When police arrived, they found Spadafora shouting at his mother, Ann Spadafora, and noticed that Spadafora’s brother, Charles Marsico, had a stab wound to his right thigh. Marisco told the authorities that Spadafora had stabbed him.
Spadafora allegedly refused to listen to orders from police, and the report states he “assumed a fighting stance, shouting, ‘I want a fair fight!'” Officers tried to subdue him with pepper spray but were unsuccessful, so they resorted to using Tasers.
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Handcuffed in the driveway, Spadafora allegedly yelled to his mother, “Mom, get all their names, I know they have to live in the city, I’m gonna kill them,” police wrote in the complaint. He attempted to spit on multiple officers, who used the hood of Spadafora’s sweatshirt to cover his mouth until medics arrived with a spit mask.
Ann Spadafora told police that her son had “come home high and was mad at Charlie (Marsico), they started fighting, and Paul stabbed Charlie,” according to the complaint.
As officers put Spadafora in the backseat of the police vehicle, he allegedly shouted again that he would kill them.
Spadafora has been charged with four counts of aggravated assault, two counts of aggravated harassment by a prisoner, seven counts of terroristic threats, one count of possessing an instrument of crime and one count of simple assault. He remained in jail as of Thursday morning and was unable to post $100,000 bail.
In 2003, Spadafora pleaded guilty to aggravated assault after he shot and wounded his pregnant girlfriend. He served seven months in prison. Then in April, Spadafora was charged with assault and harassment after he allegedly assaulted a 63-year-old woman outside a bar. The assault charge was dropped.
Spadafora was the IBF lightweight champion of the world from August 1999 to June 2003. He had a record of 49-1-1.
