When Burlington Police arrived at fellow officer Peter Abaskharoun’s home last weekend, the lieutenant told them his wife got physical with him.
“She came at me,” Abaskharoun told the responding officers, who observed a “small lump” on his head, according to a police report. “She was wailing on me, so I had no other option.”
When police went upstairs to talk to Abaskharoun’s wife, whose name was redacted from court records, their report said they found the house and the woman covered in blood.
Abaskharoun was ultimately arrested that night and charged with assault and battery on a family member and witness intimidation. He pleaded not guilty to both counts at his arraignment Monday and was released on his own personal recognizance, court records showed.
His attorney Paul Lawton declined to comment on the case.
Abaskharoun had been the one to call police on Sunday night, around 1 a.m., reporting that his wife had come at him. Shortly after, Abaskharoun’s wife’s brother also called 911 to say his sister was locked in a bathroom after Abaskharoun head-butted her.
“This is a very delicate situation… whatever has to happen, has to happen,” Abaskharoun told the officer in charge of that shift, Lt. William Trelegan, when he arrived on the scene.
Abaskharoun pointed to a lump above his right eye, and told Trelegan his wife had punched him with a closed fist, Trelegan’s report said. He claimed that to get his wife away from him during the confrontation, “I kind of threw my head… and it opened up her nose.”
As Trelegan went to check on the woman, he started to see blood before he saw her, according to his report.
There were drips on the floor and on the doorway to the bedroom, and inside the room, there was “significantly more blood on the floor, as well as blood on the furniture and bed,” Trelegan wrote.
Entering the bathroom, there was red all over the floor, the sink, the cabinets, and Abaskharoun’s wife was sitting on the toilet with bloody tissues in her nostrils and an ice pack on her nose.
“Her face and hands were covered with blood, and she had a scratch on her nose and a bruise above her right eye,” the report said.
She told the officer that the couple had gotten into an argument over something that happened earlier at a party. Trelegan noted both the husband and wife appeared to have been consuming alcohol that night.
The couple was arguing in each other’s faces when, according to his wife’s account, Abaskharoun head-butted her, and she “started gushing blood.”
Abaskharoun tried to apologize, but his wife asked him to get away from her as she tried to call her sister, the report said.
The pair started fighting over her phone, and at one point, she told Abaskharoun she thought they’d accidentally made an emergency call, to which the report said he replied, “You’re going to ruin our lives over this.”
She said she tried to leave, but Abaskharoun held her in the hallway and wouldn’t let her use her phone, Trelegan wrote, even though she told her husband she only wanted to call her sister, not the police.
“Well then, I’m calling… because you punched me in the face,” Abaskharoun said, according to his wife’s account in the report. She said he was “doing it to cover his ass.”
The officer took photos of her face, the blood upstairs, and the lump above Abaskharoun’s eye.
“The only injury to Peter I observed was the bump on his right eye, which appears to be consistent with him hitting [redacted’s] nose with his head,” the on-duty lieutenant wrote.
Abaskharoun claimed that his wife had punched him, Trelegan wrote, but the officer didn’t see any injuries on her hands.
Trelegan determined Abaskharoun was the “primary aggressor,” and he was taken into custody at the scene. “[Redacted] expressed that she did not want Peter to get arrested,” the report said.
Three hours later, when police returned to the couple’s home to retrieve Abaskharoun’s firearms, the victim’s nose was still bleeding.
“This matter is being taken extremely seriously, and appropriate administrative action will be determined based on the findings of the investigation,” Burlington Police Chief Thomas Browne said in a statement. “We are committed to conducting a thorough and impartial review.”
Abaskharoun has been placed on paid administrative leave by the department and his certification was suspended by the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission.
He is expected to be in court for a pre-trial hearing on Nov. 9 at Woburn District Court.
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