Thursday, 4:30 PM
Man pleads not guilty to mugging elderly woman in Newton
By April Yee, Globe Correspondent
WEST NEWTON - Steven J. Rigby bowed his head today in Newton District Court as a prosecutor accused him of banging a 71-year-old woman’s head into a car outside a convenience store Wednesday night and running off with $40.
Deborah Gaffney, an assistant Middlesex district attorney, told the court that when police arrested Rigby Sunday at South Station, the 26-year-old asked: "Is the old woman all right?"
Rigby pleaded not guilty today to charges of unarmed robbery of a victim over age 60 and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon on a person over age 60. He was ordered held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Defense attorney David Levinson told the court that his client did not match the description of the suspect in initial police reports, which pointed to a "tall white male with dark hair." Rigby is 5 feet 7 inches and has blond hair.
The victim was not able to identify Rigby as her attacker in a photo lineup, Levinson said.
On Wednesday, Elva Keane of Newton had bought her usual pack of Carlton cigarettes when a man followed her out of the store just before 9 p.m., said Dawn Wiggins, 43, the clerk at Auburndale Market.
Gaffney identified that man as Rigby and said in court that he asked Keane for a spare cigarette. When she agreed, Rigby banged her head off the door of her Geo Metro and left her unconscious in front of the store, Gaffney said.
Keane and Wiggins both identified Rigby in a photo lineup as a man who had been in the store moments before the assault, Gaffney said. The victim’s husband, William Keane, said today in an interview that his wife did not get a good look at the man who attacked her.
Elva Keane went to her doctor on Sunday because she was suffering from a persistent migraine. "She's not a wimp by any means," William Keane, 74, said of his wife, a former nurse. "She would love to run into this guy herself."
