ST. PAUL
A St. Paul man enraged that two men tried to enter his friend's apartment is accused of attacking them with a 3-foot-long ice scraper, smashing out a car window before allegedly gouging out one man's eye.
Justin L. Mulligan, 28, was charged with first-degree felony assault in Ramsey County District Court on Wednesday in connection with Monday's attack.
According to the complaint: The victim and another man knocked on the door of an apartment inhabited by Mulligan's female friend. Mulligan periodically lived at the apartment in the 1200 block of Westminster St., and his girlfriend lived there before she went to prison.
The female friend told police that she looked through the peephole and didn't recognize the men. She called Mulligan to come to the apartment because she was scared. Mulligan arrived just as one of the men opened the door with a key. He chased them outside.
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A police officer arrived at the scene about 7:40 p.m. and saw Mulligan shatter the driver's side window of the victims' car with the ice scraper.
"Mulligan was observed to repeatedly thrust the scraper into the head of the driver of that vehicle," the complaint said.
The driver tried to climb out the passenger window.
Mulligan was in a "blind rage," and had to be subdued with a Taser, the complaint said.
The victim was "bleeding profusely from his eye with the mangled remains of his eyeball hanging from his socket," the charges said. The victim was taken to Regions Hospital. His eye was a permanent loss.
"This was a particularly brutal attack," said police spokesman Andy Skoogman.
It's unclear why the two men were at the apartment, he said.
One of the men said he followed his friend, the driver, into the apartment but did not know why they were there, the complaint said.
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Mulligan told police the men were breaking into the apartment. When an officer told him he had no right to assault them after they fled and were no longer a threat, he replied, "Yeah, I know. I got anger problems," according to the complaint.
Mulligan's blood-alcohol concentration at his arrest was .197 percent, more than twice the legal limit to drive.
The ice scraper used in the alleged attack broke from the force.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
