Gastineau Gets Jail Time
Former Jets star Mark Gastineau was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in jail for failing to complete an anger-management course after hitting his estranged wife.
Gastineau admitted in May that he had violated terms of his probation following a guilty plea to misdemeanor assault in October 1998. So, he was ordered to spend a year in a treatment center but left after about four months, prosecutors said.
Gastineau's lawyer, Sharyn Stein, asked the judge to give the former defensive lineman another chance to straighten out his life. "He's a changed man," she said.
But Manhattan criminal court Judge A. Kirke Bartley told Gastineau, "I have given you beyond a second and third chance."
The problems grew out of Gastineau's flouting of a 1998 court order of protection to stay away from his estranged wife, Patricia Schorr.
She obtained the order after the 6-foot-5 Gastineau, who was 270 pounds during his football career, hit her and threatened her with a glass cocktail table.
In April this year, Bartley ordered Gastineau to spend a year at the Hope Christian Center, a Bronx treatment facility. If he failed to finish the program, the judge said, Gastineau was "surely" going to jail.
On Aug. 22, the 43-year-old Gastineau walked away from the program after threatening another resident, Assistant District Attorney Angela Albertus said. In court Wednesday, she reminded the judge of his warning to the former football star.
Gastineau, who played for the Jets for 10 years and retired in 1988, had previously been found guilty of assault in 1984 and was sentenced to three years' probation in 1993 on drug charges.
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