Lucas Holter, Senior Photographer

A Yale Police Department officer is being charged with assault in the second degree for allegedly beating his spouse with a golf club or a hammer, according to the warrant for his arrest issued by the Stratford Police Department last week. The officer has been placed on paid administrative leave. 

Lieutenant Roosevelt Martinez was arrested in Stratford last Wednesday and was released on a $350,000 bond. Martinez has worked for the YPD for almost two decades but his contract was recently suspended. The News was not able to reach Martinez for comment.

According to the arrest warrant obtained by the News, Stratford police officers were dispatched to the Post Road Wine and Liquor store in Stratford on Sept. 4 in response to a call from an acquaintance of the victim. Upon arriving, the officers spoke to the caller and the victim who was sitting in a car outside the store and whose face and arms were visibly injured. Though the victim initially told officers that her injury was from a fall, the warrant notes that her bruising was “not consistent” with this explanation.

Emergency medical services arrived at the scene while officers were present. When the victim got onto a stretcher to be checked out by EMS workers, officers noticed further bruising on her legs and ankles.

The owner of the liquor store told a Stratford police officer that the victim had gone to the store twice on the prior day, according to the warrant. When she came the second time, the store owner noticed the injuries, which he had not seen on her first visit.

EMS transported the victim to Bridgeport Hospital, and one of the officers rode in the ambulance with her. During the ride, the victim told the officer that her husband, Martinez, had beat her with a golf club, and that she had lost consciousness during the assault. At the hospital, the victim told medical staff that “she may have been struck by a hammer or other object.” At another point, she told the doctor that the object had been a hammer.

However, the warrant states, the victim earlier claimed she believed it was a golf club because one had been used on her “in the past.”

When hospital staff asked the victim whether such an assault had happened before, she answered that it had “one other time,” according to the warrant.

The warrant notes that officers observed the victim was under the influence of alcohol during her interaction with law enforcement and EMS, but that she was able to answer all their questions. The doctor examining the victim at the hospital told the officer who wrote the warrant that he had ordered brain imaging scans for the victim.

Detective Rachel Crosby, the public information officer for the Stratford Police Department, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A Yale spokesperson confirmed to the News that Martinez has been placed on paid administrative leave, but declined to provide further detail as to when his contract was suspended or whether the change is related to his arrest. 

“We have nothing further to add,” the University spokesperson wrote to the News on Sunday. 

Martinez was promoted to the title of YPD sergeant in 2011 and was named a lieutenant in 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2015, he won the Connecticut Chiefs of Police Association’s Medal of Valor and the YPD’s Life Saving Medal for his role in rescuing an individual attempting to commit suicide.

Martinez has not yet entered a plea, according to online court records. He will next appear in court on Oct. 8 in Bridgeport.