Mass Ave Assault Charges Dropped

A Middlesex County judge dismissed charges yesterday against two men accused of attacking an unarmed man on Mass Ave near Radcliffe two months ago.

Cambridge police charged Thomas Rajatta and Robert Mullen with assaulting Jerome C. Allen with a deadly weapon with intent to murder on September 26.

Allen, who received knife wounds to the neck, face and abdomen, did not appear in court to give his account of the incident. After being discharged from the Cambridge Hospital, police discovered that warrants had been issued for his arrest for parole violations, Officer John Kosinski, who made the arrests, said yesterday.

Judge Lawrence F. Feloney dismissed all charges on the grounds of insufficient prosecution. The defendants can be in- dicted at a later date if Allen is ever found.

At the time of the incident, Rajatto and Mullen lived in the halfway house for exconvicts on Linnaean Street. The halfway house was closed last month, according to the Massachusetts Department of Corrections.

Daniel T. Hull '75, who lives at 1705 Mass Ave, an undergraduate co-op associated with Dudley House, was the only witness for the prosecution who showed up in court yesterday morning.

According to Hull, around 1 a.m. on September 26, he heard shouts and cries from the street below his room. From his window he saw two men, both white, kicking a prone black man on the sidewalk of Mass Ave.

Near Pizza Parlor

At that point, Hull said he rushed down the street barefoot with his hunting knife. At his approach, Hull said that the two assailants told him, "He ripped us off," pointing to Allen, who was staggering to his feet.

As Hull, Rajatto and Mullen were about to fight, a Cambridge police car arrived and arrested Rajatto and Mullen, Hull said. The police were notified by people in the Harvard House of Pizza, who watched the incident from within the pizza parlor