Nearly three months after killing a cab driver with a single punch to the head during an altercation, a Hampton Bays man will face an assault charge—instead of manslaughter, the charge sought by the Suffolk County district attorney’s office—after a grand jury declined to indict him on the more serious count last week.
Kenneth J. Tofty-Forrest, 27, landed a single punch to the head of Four Ones Taxi driver Robert Levasseur just after 2 p.m. on April 21 in the Chase Bank parking lot near the 7-Eleven convenience store on Montauk Highway in Hampton Bays, sending the cab driver into a coma. The 53-year-old Riverhead resident died five days later at the Stony Brook University Medical Center. The cause of death was later determined to be blunt force trauma.
Mr. Tofty-Forrest was charged with assault in the third degree following the incident, pleaded not guilty and was later released after posting $500 bail. He told police he struck the cab driver while coming to the defense of Hampton Bays resident Faith Miller, who had an altercation with Mr. Levasseur after she said she recognized him as the driver of the cab that had cut her off earlier in the day on Bay Avenue, forcing her car off the road.
The D.A.’s office presented evidence to a grand jury earlier this month seeking an upgrade of charges to felony manslaughter in the second degree, or, alternately, criminally negligent homicide. But on Friday the grand jury, after hearing testimony from witnesses, voted to decline to indict Mr. Tofty-Forrest on the charges, and instead directed the D.A.’s office to file a single charge of assault in the third degree, according to Bob Clifford, a spokesman for the D.A.’s office.
If convicted, Mr. Tofty-Forrest could be sentenced to up to a year in the Suffolk County Jail. Mr. Tofty-Forrest was expected to be arraigned on the charge in Southampton Justice Court on Wednesday.
His attorney, Cornelius S. Rogers, said on Wednesday that he would ask the court to dismiss the charge, saying that if there wasn’t enough evidence to support the stronger charges, the lesser charge should also be called into question.
“We believe there’s problems with what transpired in the grand jury, and I’m going to ask them to dismiss the charge,” he said. “I will file a motion telling [the judge] to read the grand jury testimony and asking her to dismiss the charge.”
He noted that he provided the grand jury with information and case law that he said demonstrated that his client “acted in defense of another.”
Following the April 21 incident, Mr. Tofty-Forrest told police that when he was leaving the 7-Eleven, he saw Mr. Levasseur punch Ms. Miller in the face and was compelled to intercede. Some witnesses on the scene, however, said Mr. Levasseur instead pushed Ms. Miller, according to the D.A.’s office.
“I had to do something,” he told police at the time, adding, “after I hit him I called police to report it.”
According to a police source, Mr. Tofty-Forrest came up from behind and landed an unexpected, punch to Mr. Levasseur’s right eye, sending fragments of his orbital bone, or eye socket, into his brain. He fell to the ground and was conscious for several minutes before falling into a coma.
Ms. Miller, a former dispatcher for the same cab company, said that after Mr. Lavasseur cut her off earlier in the day, she later observed the taxi driver pulling into the Chase Bank parking lot in Hampton Bays. When she recognized him, she said, she confronted him about the earlier incident and Mr. Levasseur got out of his taxi, approached her and struck her.
