MEDFORD, Mass. — Cambridge District Court prosecutors on Friday charged Victor J. Rivas with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon leading to serious bodily injury and with carrying a dangerous weapon. Rivas, 51, was involved in an altercation on Tuesday night in an apartment at 116 Norfolk St. in Cambridge that led to a fatality. Rivas pled not guilty through his public defender, who argued that Rivas had acted in self-defense.
Assistant District Attorney Jacob McCrindle told Associate District Court Justice Kareem A. Morgan that the state was continuing to investigate whether a charge of murder or manslaughter was warranted. He said there was some evidence corroborating the defendant’s claim that he had acted in self-defense.
McCrindle and public defender Carolyn McGowan provided more details about the incident, which was said to have happened during a marijuana purchase. Rivas had been admitted to the building by another resident, a woman, who was in the studio apartment with the decedent, who has not been named. Rivas and the decedent then went into a bathroom, where the other resident heard an argument ensue.
The surveillance camera in the building’s lobby then showed Rivas “fleeing” the building, according to McCrindle, followed quickly by the decedent, who fell in the lobby. The victim was able to describe Rivas to police, who had been dispatched at approximately 7:52 PM in response to a 911 call reporting that a man had been stabbed.
Fire and Emergency Medical Services responders brought the man to a local hospital, where he later died.
McCrindle told the court that police found Rivas nearby and arrested him. “They saw he had blood on his face and hands. He notified the police he had been robbed.”
McGowan emphasized that Rivas immediately told police about the robbery, that the man had held a knife to his throat and pushed him against the wall. Further, the woman who had let Rivas in said at one point the door to the bathroom opened and she could see Rivas being held against the wall. A knife alleged to be the decedent’s was found in two pieces on the bathroom floor, and the struggle had been violent enough to dislodge the toilet seat.
McCrindle had noted that Rivas has “a significant record in terms of number of charges,” mostly related to possession of a Class B substance (in Massachusetts, these include drugs like cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine). He also has had driving offenses. His most recent charge was in 2017 for possession of a Class B substance with intent to distribute, for which Rivas completed a term of probation in February 2019.
“Strong case” for self-defense
When McGowan addressed the court, she said that the defense had a “very strong case” that Rivas had acted in self-defense. She also noted he has been homeless for much of his adult life, has no assets, and was found with only $18 in his pockets. “He has had a difficult life,” McGowan told the court. She said he was entering a transitional housing program and was about to start a vocational training program. “It would be devastating to him to lose transitional housing and access to this program.”
In a dramatic moment, she pointed to Rivas and noted the bandages on his forehead, incurred during the altercation. Then she asked him to turn around , showing the judge a wound of an inch-and-a-half to two inches long on the back of Rivas’s neck. “That’s some kind of laceration. That was bleeding at the time [police found him]. His coat was sliced in a way that was consistent with his account of having been attacked.”
She also said that when Rivas learned of the death, he reportedly fell to the ground, distraught.
The prosecution asked Rivas be held on $75,000 bail, arguing that even if the state did not pursue manslaughter or murder charges, the current charges “are still very serious charges that carry significant penalties.”
Morgan, after conferring with the attorneys, set release at a $5,000 surety. He ordered home confinement to the transitional housing, but with bi-weekly windows of release for legal and medical services and essential items. Other conditions of release were that Rivas be fitted with a GPS device, that he stay away from 116 Norfolk and have no contact with the victim’s family or any witnesses, and that he be subjected to random drug screens.
McGowan asked that that Rivas be released with a curfew that would allow him to attend a local vocational program in the Boston area that he is scheduled to start Jan. 14. Morgan said he could not grant that without knowing the expected schedule, but said he was open to considering it.
A pre-trial date was set for February 6.
This story was updated to clarify that Rivas’s attorney said he was in line for transitional housing and about to start a vocational program.
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