A dispute between roommates about television volume turned violent last week when one roommate, who works as a baker and pastry chef, attacked and beat the other with a rolling pin, according to the victim and police reports.
Suspect Michael Phillip Ferraro turned himself in the day after the attack on Jan. 3. He was arrested and charged with suspicion of second-degree assault, a class-4 felony, and obstruction of telephone services, a misdemeanor, for allegedly attacking Travis Dalenberg in the living room of their rental house and then taking Dalenberg’s phone. Ferraro was released on bail the same day.
The pair had been friends at Durango High School where they both graduated in 2004, but had not spent much time together until becoming roommates in June, Dalenberg said.
“I hadn’t seen him in so long, or often, just one-on-one since our mid-20s or so and I just assumed living with an old friend wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Dalenberg said when reached Monday by The Durango Herald. “And I thought I would help him out because it’s hard to find good places to live.”
But almost immediately it was a “bad living situation” with Ferraro becoming “very aggressive” about how he expected things to be around the house, Dalenberg said.
“He was very disrespectful and arrogant and he’d be damned if I got to have things my way,” Dalenberg said. “And so what ended up happening is we just coexisted and very rarely spoke. He just expected me to never use the common areas. He considered it his house and I could just sit in my room.”
Ferraro declined to comment for this story.
“Thank you for the opportunity to tell a little bit of my side, but while my case in ongoing, I don’t think I can really make any comment on it,” he said.
The confrontation that led to the attack occurred about 1 p.m. when Ferraro returned from skiing, according to an arrest affidavit.
Dalenberg said he was sitting in the living room “for a change” watching television on his phone and listening through a peripheral speaker when Ferraro came home, made lunch, then sat down in the living room and turned on his big screen television, which was above Dalenberg’s head.
“So I turned mine up,” Dalenberg said. “And then he turned his up.”
Dalenberg left the room to change laundry loads and then returned to the living room and turned the volume on his speaker all the way up, he said.
“And that’s when he got up and went into the back to a mud room where we both keep stuff,” Dalenberg said. “And when I turned and looked up again he had a French-style rolling pin in his hand and (was already swinging), and if I wouldn’t have blocked my face he would have gotten me straight in the face.”
Dalenberg said he blocked the first blows with his left arm but then shock kicked in and the next thing he knew he was on the floor with Ferraro raining blows down on him.
“I don’t know how many hits it was but I took a bunch of hits,” Dalenberg said. He later told police he estimated that Ferraro hit him 25 to 30 times before it was all over.
“I grabbed a music stand and pushed that at him but he was able to push it down pretty easily and then I was back on the floor taking some more hits until I grabbed a stool and tried to do the same thing, but none of it really worked,” Dalenberg said. “And I just remember screaming ‘stop!’ until he stopped.”
Dalenberg said he was “pretty dazed,” and though he has never experienced being knocked unconscious, thought after one particular blow that he “was going to go under.”
It was about then that Dalenberg noticed he was bleeding. He went into his room and returned to the living room to grab his phone, but said Ferraro took it and stashed it somewhere, before blocking the front door with the rolling pin still in hand.
“That’s when he started to yell at me for not doing enough around the house,” Dalenberg said. “Basically just roommate stuff. He didn’t have anything to complain about. He just had to have things his way. So I grabbed a paring knife and I was holding it and we were standing about 10 feet apart. And my only answer to him was ‘so you just assault me, that’s what you’re doing?’”
The two squared off for a minute and then Dalenberg said Ferraro walked into his bedroom, which was next to the front door, so Dalenberg grabbed his car keys and drove first to get gas, where he noticed he was covered in blood, and then on to the police station. But when he arrived the station lobby was closed.
“And I work at Durango Coffee Co. as a cook so I just walked to there,” he said. “And it was a snowy day, I was super freezing and wet and stuff, in my pajama pants and slippers.”
His boss snapped some photos and then took Dalenberg to Urgent Care on north Main Avenue and called police.
When police arrived, Dalenberg had dried blood on his neck and shirt, redness and swelling on his forearms and a 5-inch gash that was still bloody on the back of his head, according to the police report. Police then tried in vain to locate Ferraro at work and at home. An officer found blood in the home but not the rolling pin.
The officer then returned to Urgent Care to get Ferraro’s phone number from Dalenberg.
The officer called Ferraro, who told him he became angry when he got home from skiing and noticed that Dalenberg had not done any chores around the house. Then the television volume incident occurred. Ferraro told the officer that was when he retrieved the rolling pin and “hit him (Dalenberg) with the rolling pin” three or four times. Ferraro agreed to turn himself in the next day.
Ferraro is scheduled to appear in court Jan. 19.
Dalenberg has a protection order against Ferraro and has changed the locks on the house. The incident has left Dalenberg with bruises and welts on his arm as well as staples to close two gashes in his head.
“But it (meant) more than I wanted to admit as far as the aftermath for me,” Dalenberg said. “I mean the pain was pretty bad yesterday. But I didn’t expect to have so many conflicting emotions, because he was an old friend.”
He says he is left to fill out a victim impact statement for the court, but that he’s not yet sure what justice should look like. “I want to at least see some jail time. The more people I talk to the more they remind me about how serious it is. And I can’t drop the charges. It’s now him against the state of Colorado.”
Dalenberg shared a final light comment about Ferraro’s choice of a French rolling pin, which he described as not having handles but tapering down at the ends, to attack him with.
“He’s a very experienced baker so I just thought it was kind of perfect that that’s what he chose,” Dalenberg said. “Not that it was fun.”
gjaros@durangoherald.com
