A New York City police officer pleaded innocent on Monday to charges that he beat up a woman after breaking into her apartment while wearing only underwear, New York’s Daily News reports.
Officer Eugene Donnelly was arraigned in Bronx Supreme Court for the June 10 incident. Donnelly—who, mere hours before the alleged incident, was awarded the Police Combat Cross, the New York City Police Department’s second-highest honor—faces misdemeanor charges of assault, criminal trespass and criminal mischief, according to the Daily News, which could get him up to a year in jail.
The 27-year-old has been relieved of his badge and gun, although he remains on modified duty, the news site notes.
According to the Daily News, Donnelly was presented with the award in a ceremony on June 10, shaking hands with Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. The Combat Cross was reportedly awarded for a 2012 arrest of a gunman who had fired at the officer.
However, while celebrating his own heroic actions, Donnelly reportedly got drunk and went to a friend’s apartment to sleep it off, the Daily News notes. It was then that he broke into a 30-year-old neighbor’s apartment and went to her bedside in only his underwear.
“Sometimes I’m a good guy, but sometimes I’m a bad guy,” Donnelly reportedly said to the woman, whom he apparently did not know, according to a complaint.
He then allegedly tossed the woman to the ground and “pummeled her about the head,” Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson claimed. After that, Donnelly reportedly went into the kitchen and downed a carton of milk that he took from the woman’s refrigerator.
The terrorized victim immediately reported the assault, and after a colleague of Donnelly’s recognized him in the photo of his seminaked image taken from surveillance footage, he was arrested, according to the Daily News.
Read more at the New York Daily News.