A former employee of Sal’s Pizza said she thought an on-duty Concord police officer was going to kill a homeless man when she witnessed him push the man to the ground outside the Storrs Street restaurant in April 2023.

The Webster woman’s testimony – which was stricken by a Merrimack County Superior Court judge for being speculative – came at the end of the first day of a trial for that officer, who has been charged with two counts of assault for his actions during an arrest.

Richard Cobb, who worked for the Concord Police Department from 2017 to 2023, responded to the pizza chain for a report of a man muttering to himself that he was going to shoot an “invisible person,” prosecutor Dan Jimenez said in his opening statement.

Cobb and another officer eventually decided to take the man, Blake Haney, into protective custody, but Haney struggled as they placed him into handcuffs, a video played in court showed. Cobb, 41, eventually knocked him down and appeared to push his face toward the sidewalk, the video showed.

“Because he was having trouble, he took Blake’s head and threw it into the pavement,” Jimenez said during his opening statement.

Later, as the officers searched Haney next to a police cruiser, Cobb pushed Haney toward the car, another video clip played showed.

Jurors in the case, which is expected to last two days, will need to decide whether the force Cobb used was reasonable.

Cobb’s attorney, Eric Wilson, argued in his opening statement that Cobb had reason to believe the situation could grow violent.

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“You’ll hear evidence that there was a possibility of a firearm,” Wilson said.

The take-down occurred when one of Haney’s arms was cuffed but the other was free. Wilson said that the open handcuff could also have been dangerous if Haney had broken free of the officers.

Ultimately, a glass liquor bottle was the only weapon recovered from the man.

The first person to testify in the case was George Tarwo, the other officer who responded to the scene that day.

Tarwo, who is also a legendary former Concord High School wrestler, said the situation grew dangerous as Haney struggled while partially handcuffed. If Haney had been able to break from the officers’ grasp, it would have been “a major concern,” Tarwo testified.

Haney, a 5’10” medium-set white man, will not testify at the trial because the prosecutor said they couldn’t locate him. He presented a Missouri ID and was not familiar to Concord police at the time, according to Tarwo.

In addition to the two charges in this case, Cobb also faces separate assault charges from an incident that occurred six days beforehand. In that case, which is set to go to trial in March, he is accused of assaulting two individuals.

Cobb now lives in Arizona and was charged with the four counts of assault last March. He faces a sentence of up to two to five years for each count.

The Concord Police Department has not yet responded to a right-to-know request for Cobb’s personnel file that was filed by the Monitor earlier this week.

The witness, Brooke Bartlett, said she was working at Sal’s slices counter when she witnessed the interaction between Haney and the officers.

“Once he threw him on the ground, I was scared and I stopped trying to pay attention,” Bartlett said. 

When asked why she was scared, Bartlett said,“Honestly, I thought he was going to kill him.”

Haney sustained gashes to his forehead and underneath his left eye, photos showed.

Over more than an hour of testimony, Tarwo described an interaction that began relatively calmly before escalating.

Tarwo, who was the first officer to respond to the call, said he immediately noticed Haney was intoxicated. After initially refusing the officers’ request to take a breathalyzer test, Tarwo said he ultimately complied.

The test registered 0.32, four times over the legal limit to drive, Wilson said during his opening statement.

The officers offered to release Haney to a sober individual but he didn’t provide a name for them to call, so they took him into protective custody, Tarwo said.

After Tarwo handcuffed one of Haney’s wrists, he resisted the officers’ attempts to cuff the second, Tarwo said.

Cobb, who was also holding Haney, “was trying to de-escalate him,” Tarwo testified.

About 40 seconds after Haney’s first arm was cuffed and as he continued to resist, Cobb pushed him to the ground, Tarwo said.

Later, as the officers searched the handcuffed Haney against one of their cruisers, Cobb pushed him towards the car when Haney “looked toward Officer Cobb”, Tarwo testified.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com