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A former St. John’s University lacrosse player was grilled on the stand Tuesday about starting the brawl that ended with him getting stabbed in the guts by his roommate.
“I was extremely angry. I guess you could call that a rage,” Justin Corpolongo said in Queens Supreme Court during cross-examination by defense attorney Michael Douglas Horn.
The lawyer was pressing Corpolongo about getting “into a bit of a rage” on the night of Oct. 23, 2019 — after he came home from work to find his roommate, St. John’s lacrosse captain Matthew Stockfeder, partying and playing loud music with roughly 20 other guys.
Corpolongo, who graduated in 2018 and works as a teacher, politely asked them to turn the sound down before leaving his basement room to pull the cord out of the speaker.
The rowdy bunch left to take the party to another house — but the tiff spilled over into a group text, where Stockfeder “antagonized” the victim, Assistant District Attorney Konstantinos Litourgis said Monday, on the first day of Stockfeder’s assault trial.
Stockfeder’s attorney on Tuesday challenged Corpolongo about why he didn’t just shut his phone off if the missives were affecting his ability to sleep — noting that the college grad’s job teaching developmentally disabled students required him to have “patience.”
“Was there anything stopping and shutting your phone?” Horn asked, to which Corpolongo replied “No.”
“So you chose not to do that right? Instead you got angry.”
The attorney described how Corpolongo got dressed and left to find Stockfeder at the other house, where the two squared up.
“I hit him first,” Corpolongo admitted.
“And you didn’t just hit him once, right?” Horn followed up, to which Corpolongo replied “No.”
Prosecutors have said that two lacrMatthew Stockfederosse players stepped in to break up the brawl — which is when Stockfeder “took a knife from his waistband and plunged it not once but twice into his [Corpolongo’s] lower abdomen.”
Earlier Tuesday, Corpolongo broke down on the stand has he described the moment he realized he had nearly been gutted.
“I saw a purple fist-sized growth protruding out of my stomach … It was gross to look at,” he told the jury.
Stockfeder, meanwhile, was “still screaming things,” like, “What the f–k is wrong with you?” and F–k you!’” Corpolongo recalled.
“I looked up and said I need to go to the hospital right now,” Corpolongo said. “I was losing a lot of blood.”
Corpolongo’s mother wept loudly in the gallery as her son described his injuries.
“I moved and blood shot up on the ceiling,” Corpolongo said, sobbing.
A pal “put his hand on my stomach and tried to push it back inside me,” he continued, as the judge called for a break and court officers handed him napkins to wipe his eyes.
The trial is set to continue Wednesday.
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