Apr. 21—The misdemeanor cases against Glastonbury Board of Education member M. Ray McFall and resident Mark Finocchiaro, who got in a dust-up during a December 2021 board hearing on the emotional issue of whether to restore the Tomahawk mascot for the high school's sports teams, disappeared from public court records Thursday.

That indicates that both men successfully completed the one-year periods of probation that Judge Karyl L. Carrasquilla had imposed when she granted them admission to the state's accelerated rehabilitation program exactly a year earlier, on April 20, 2022.

Under state law, successful completion of the program results in dismissal of the criminal charges facing a defendant and the "erasure" of all public records of the charges.

RECORDS DISAPPEAR

DEFENDANTS: Glastonbury Board of Education member M. Ray McFall and resident Mark Finocchiaro.

CHARGES: Second-degree breach of peace.

OUTCOME: The disappearance of public records on the cases indicates that both men successfully completed the accelerated rehabilitation program, leading to dismissal of their cases and erasure of all public records of the charges.

McFall and Finocchiaro were both charged with second-degree breach of peace in the confrontation, which occurred during a break in the school board's hearing on a petition to restore use of the Tomahawk mascot. The hearing was held in the high school auditorium on Dec. 14. 2021.

Finocchiaro spoke in favor of restoring the mascot. McFall, who had voted to change the mascot more than a year earlier and would do so again the following week, was in charge of keeping track of the time allotted to each speaker.

When board Chairman Douglas Foyle told Finocchiaro his time was up, Finocchiaro used profanities to Foyle and McFall.

The confrontation occurred after McFall, then a Republican, left the stage during the subsequent break. He later told police he intended to speak with Kurt Cavanaugh, the Republican minority leader on the Town Council, about how the hearing was going.

McFall told police that Finocchiaro or someone in his group asked who he was, and things got heated, according to an affidavit by School Resource Officer Jason Trudeau. McFall also said he thought Finocchiaro, whom he didn't know, was being egged on and smelled of alcohol, the officer wrote.

Finocchiaro was between McFall and the permanent seating of the high school auditorium, according to videos of the incident and Trudeau's affidavit.

At one point, Finocchiaro brought his face very close to the side of McFall's face and called the military veteran an obscene name, the officer reported.

McFall put his hands on Finocchiaro's chest and pushed him back slowly, so that the top half of his body was leaning back a little over the auditorium seats, according to at least one video and the affidavit.

At that point, Finocchiaro punched McFall in the face, knocking him down.

McFall had "dark bruising around his left eye" during the police interview the day after the incident, the officer reported.

Within a week, George Norman, then the Republican town chairman, asked McFall to resign from the Board of Education. McFall declined and instead resigned from the Republican Party.

Finocchiaro didn't speak to police during their investigation of the incident. But McFall acknowledged to officers the day after the hearing that he was very angry, and that "he should have backed away from Mark and handled the situation differently," Trudeau reported.

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