Man Who Fought Frosh Gets Six Months in Jail

A 20-year-old Cambridge man was sentenced recently to six months in prison for attacking a freshman October 31.

John J. Farrell, of 153 Allston St., pleaded guilty to assault with dangerous weapon for chasing Stuart R. Mawhinney with a three-foot stick in front of Canaday C.

Because Farrell was on parole with a suspended sentence at the time, Middlesex District Court Judge Fredrick V. Gilgun sentenced him to six months in the county House of Correction, said Thomas J. Begley, a court clerk.

Mawhinney, a Greenough resident, said yesterday he was outside Store 24 Halloween evening with a friend, watching a disturbance that later turned into a fight where several people were stabbed. Mawhinney said a man turned to them and asked "What are you looking at?"

"We exchanged remarks, and then my friend and I decided to leave. All of a sudden, he came after us with a tree branch," Mawhinney said. "We ran different ways to Canaday, and by the time I got there, he was banging on the door of the entryway with his branch, screaming at my friend."

"So I went up and hit him and took away the branch," Mawhinney said. Harvard Police later arrested Farrell on Garden Street, and turned him over to Cambridge Police that night.

Mawhinney was summoned to court last Friday, but did not even have to testify. "As soon as he saw me, the guy confessed," Mawhinney said.

Cambridge Police emphasized that Farrell was not sent to prison because he attacked a Harvard student, but only because of his previous record.