By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — A man accused of beating a woman into a coma after a dispute over an East Village parking spot deserves just a wrist slap, his lawyer told the New York Post Friday.
"There is nothing to suggest my client intended to inflict serious injury," Thomas Kenniff, lawyer for Oscar Fuller, 34, told the Post. "At most, the charge should be misdemeanor assault."
The alleged attack left Lana Rosas, 25, with permanent brain damage. Doctors had to open her skull to relieve pressure on her brain and believe she may yet die, according to a complaint filed in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Fuller faces a charge of assualt in the second degree, according to the complaint. Fuller, whose criminal record includes arrests for assault and drug possession, was released on bail Friday.
Fuller is accused of injuring Rosas in a Feb. 25 incident across the street from Stuyvesant Town. Rosas was allegedly trying to hold a parking spot on East 14th Street for her boyfriend when fuller drove up in a silver minivan. Fuller allegedly became enraged and hit Rosas so hard she fell onto the concrete, hitting her head.
However, Kenniff claims that Rosas initiated the violence, the Daily News reported. Fuller got out of his Plymouth Voyager, politely asked her to move and only retaliated after Rosas punched him several times, Kenniff alleged.
Photos of the aftermath obtained by the paper show a 4-foot-11 Rosas bloodied, unconscious and lying face up as paramedics applied a neckbrace.
Family members of the victim, as well as her boyfriend Joseph Oliver, prayed for her recovery at Bellevue Friday, the News reported.
Police arrested Fuller, an electrician and father of two, at his Queens home on Tuesday, according to the News. Although he faces felony assault charges, his lawyer has defended his actions as caused by instinct.
"He didn't act on intent," Kenniff told the paper. "We punish intent and foreseeable acts."
Rosas, of the Bronx, and Oliver, 26, were in the East Village for dinner at the time of the alleged attack. Fuller was in Manhattan to attend a birthday party.
