Rescue Pitbull Blamed For Officer Crowley's Gun Discharge

JOLIET, IL - A mid-July weekend from last summer offered a chance to unwind, so Joliet Police Officer Nick Crowley and his 33-year-old fiancee, who is also a Joliet Police Officer, began their afternoon attending a friend's 40th birthday party around 3 p.m. "I believe Nick had a beer," his fiancee Cassandra "Cassie" Socha testified on Tuesday afternoon at Will County's Courthouse.

The special prosecutor called the woman as her first witness during the first day of Crowley's criminal trial. He is charged with two felony counts of reckless discharge of a firearm. Crowley and his criminal defense attorney Jeff Tomczak decided Tuesday to have a bench trial in front of Judge Daniel Kennedy rather than have the case tried in front of a jury.

Last July 16, after stopping at the birthday party, Crowley and his lover went out for dinner together at Gatto's in New Lenox. Both were off-duty that weekend.

"I know I had a sangria. He had another beer," the fiancee testified in Courtroom 400.

From there, the couple drove to another local bar, Bulldog Ale House, where they stayed "for a few hours until 12:30 a.m. maybe," the witness testified.

When Crowley's fiancee was pressed for details about her alcohol consumption at Bulldogs, she testified, "I had a couple of vodka sodas."

"Could it have been more than five?" asked special prosecutor Lorinda Lamken.

"It could have been," she agreed.

After midnight, she and Crowley "we went to another bar ... Anthony's," she testified.

Anthony's Steakhouse & Pub is near the Louis Joliet Mall. Last summer, Anthony's had a reputation as one of Joliet's most troublesome bars.

At any rate, Crowley's fiancee remembered that she continued drinking more vodka sodas, and Crowley "had a beer. I believe so," she answered.

The prosecutor asked whether she would consider herself intoxicated inside of Anthony's bar?

"Yes," the off-duty Joliet officer agreed.

Next, Lamken inquired about Crowley's condition during the early morning hours of July 16, 2017.

"I can't speak for someone else's intoxication; I was," the fiancee testified.

The adversarial prosecution witness refused to concede that she told fellow Joliet Police supervisors last summer that Crowley "was buzzed."

This made the special prosecutor even more frustrated Tuesday afternoon.

The prosecutor told Judge Kennedy that her witness was now becoming "difficult and uncooperative. We're clearly crossing over into a hostile witness."

In any event, Crowley and his fiancee stayed at Anthony's bar until it closed around 3 a.m.

There was "no prior disagreement. We left in the same car. Anthony's isn't too far from our house," the woman testified.

The fiancee's townhouse is on Mustang Road. Crowley typically stayed there. Once they got home during the wee hours of the morning, tempers flared, she testified.

They got into a disagreement about their plans for an upcoming summer weekend.

"I was upset we had not had a period of time to ourselves in quite a while," the fiancee testified. She and Crowley have been engaged since February 2017, she testified.

Crowley accused her of "extracurricular activities" involving her talking to a male friend.

That's about when Gia, the woman's rescue pit bull from Chicago, entered the trial testimony.

After the woman bent down to put on the dog's choke and shock collar to take Gia outside; Crowley threw a tumbler against her refrigerator.

Next, "I threw a picture frame," the witness testified. "We were arguing. We were yelling."

All of a sudden, the woman's rescue pit bull "barked and kind of got down and barked at Nick."

Glass was broken all over the rug, according to testimony.

The fiancee remembered that because of the way her dog was acting, Crowley exclaimed, "I'm going to kill your (expletive) dog!"

"She's growling and kind of barking," the fiancee testified. When the dog tried to bite her owner, "I heard a gunshot, yes."

"Did you have your gun in your hand?" the prosecutor inquired.

"No," she testified.

The fiancee darted upstairs.

"I grabbed a pair of pajamas and put them in my car," she said.

Once the woman got outside, she realized the doors to her townhouse were all locked. And she did not have her keys. She suspected Crowley had locked her out. She walked around the perimeter of her property. In the backyard, she peered inside through a window and saw Crowley.

"He was looking up at the ceiling. He was messing with the hole in the wall. It was dark outside, and I was drunk," the fiancee remembered. "I videotaped it."

Sometime between 4 and 5 a.m., she found one of the doors unlocked. "I assume Nick unlocked it."

By now, Crowley was in their upstairs master bedroom. "I saw Nick was packing a bag. I got upset, and I started yelling. I threw a low shot at his kids. We went at it again. He pulled out the TV. I went for the TV too and it dropped."

The prosecutor pressed her witness with several questions asking whether Crowley threw the TV or caused the damage, but the fiancee said they had equal blame. "We both had the TV in our hands. The TV fell out of both of our grasps."

The prosecutor asked if there was any physical altercation or violence involving Crowley and her.

Absolutely not, the woman testified.

"He got into his car and I threw another picture at his car," the fiancee testified. "That broke in the garage."

She figured that Crowley drove off around 5 a.m., perhaps shortly before.

Around 5:15 a.m. the woman began calling and texting several of her friends to notify them of the episode that occurred at her townhouse.

Around 8 a.m., the woman called her mother. The fiancee's mother notified Joliet's Police by calling on a non-emergency phone number to reach one of the lieutenants. Police found blood around the home and took several photos of the crime scene for evidence but the fiancee insisted during Tuesday's bench trial that any blood came as a result of her cutting her foot on the broken glass.

"You had blood?" the special prosecutor asked.

"I had a sandal on, and it was slippery."

"It was only you and Nick in the house?"

"It was."

Later, the prosecution presented two more witnesses, Wayne and Betty Howard. They live in the other duplex. Wayne Howard remembered being awoken during the middle of the night by his wife. "She heard a noise. It sounded like a gun went off," he testified. "I said, 'You're crazy' and brushed it off and went back to sleep."

During cross-examination from Tomczak, Howard testified that on a prior occasion, his female neighbor's rescue pit bull "looked at me and took an aggressive step toward me. Luckily, her teeth did not tear my shirt. Nick grabbed her and got her" away.

Wayne Howard told the courtroom it wasn't the first time a dog tried to attack him. "I was a letter carrier for 30 years," he said.

Betty Howard testified that she heard the gunshot, and a whole lot more commotion coming from the duplex occupied by the female Joliet officer and Crowley.

"It was a big boom," she testified. "There was a lot of pounding and running. It sounded like her head was being hit against the floor."

But it was the first noise that got her attention. "I'm like 'Oh my God' was that a gun? I thought it hit a stud in the wall. I immediately thought it was a gunshot."

The prosecutor asked Betty Howard how sound proof the walls are between their duplexes.

"We can hear them walking up the stairs. We can hear them having sex," she added.

The trial resumes Wednesday, and the bench trial may finish later in the day.

Main image of Nicholas Crowley via Will County Sheriff's Department