Pembroke woman had protective order against former boyfriend, Conn. police say

In Connecticut, DeJoseph, 32, was arrested on Wednesday by Waterbury police on a charge of second-degree assault in connection with a St. Patrick’s Day bar brawl in which he allegedly cut another man’s lip and chin wide open by striking him with a beer bottle. While DeJoseph was being held on that charge, local investigators contacted authorities in Connecticut informing them that DeJoseph was a suspect in the alleged murder for hire plot in Massachusetts.

Police in Wolcott, Conn., where DeJoseph lives, then conducted a search of his house, finding eight firearms, a violation of the protective order that Banks had filed. DeJoseph was arraigned Thursday and ordered held on $2.5 million bail, according to Waterbury police Lieutenant Chris Corbett.

Corbett said in a telephone interview Thursday night, ‘‘I can’t speak to what has happened in Massachusetts, but the bar attack was very violent, very serious, and left the victim knocked out and with severe facial injuries that probably will require plastic surgery.’’

Banks was so frightened of her former boyfriend, according to her friends and her employer, that she once showed her co-workers a picture of him and instructed them to call 911 if they saw him hanging around her job.

‘‘Her fear of this fellow was deep, and whenever she talked of him she grew agitated,’’ said Douglas Banks , the owner of the Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Hanover, where the victim, no relation, worked the past two years as an instructor and office manager. ‘‘She told me that he beat her up several years ago, bad enough to send her to the hospital, so I understood that this man was dangerous,’’ Douglas Banks said on Thursday, standing in the middle of his studio.

Banks is recovering at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Membreno, 25, was charged with attempted murder and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Membreno faced murder charges just five years ago, after he confessed to killing Ariel Ortiz in a dispute over a radio, according to a report in the Bridgeport Post newspaper. Bridgeport police confirmed Wednesday that Membreno was arrested in the case for the murder on June 7, 2005. His defense attorney in the murder trial that ended in acquittal did not immediately return calls Thursday.

In Massachusetts, Douglas Banks said Banks received dozens of hang-up calls at work and that she suspected her ex- former boyfriend was the caller.

Banks’s father, Charles, reported the assault in a 911 calls call to Pembroke police on Tuesday.

‘‘My daughter was just coming home from work,’’ he told the 911 dispatcher. ‘‘She’s parking her car, somebody jumped out and fired — it looks like a pellet gun — at her.’’

Charles Banks told the dispatcher his daughter was conscious and that the family was going to rush her to a hospital. At the request of the dispatcher, the Banks family stayed put and waited for an ambulance to arrive.

Charles Banks later told the dispatcher he was not sure what kind of weapon was used. ‘‘I don’t know what she was shot with,’’ he said.

A man who answered the door Thursday at the Banks family home on Lake Avenue declined comment, except to report that Marybeth Banks’s health is improving.