The mother of a Connecticut boy accused of deliberately setting his 6-year-old neighbor on fire wants the family of the burned boy punished after a recently released video contradicted her claims.
Laura Giacobbe, in an interview with The Post on Tuesday, called on police to arrest the mother of little Dominick Krankall for allegedly lying about the April incident and putting her son “through hell.”
“Your son had to go to Yankee Stadium while my son sat inside scared because of all the statements made against him,” Giacobbe, 45, said from his Bridgeport home.
“I want her arrested because I don’t think it’s fair. It is a character assassination,” Giacobbe continued. “She slandered my family. She put my son through hell. She put me through hell. I want her arrested for making false statements.”
Krankall’s family had claimed that Dominick suffered second and third degree burns after being attacked by an 8-year-old stalker while playing in his backyard in Bridgeport on April 24.
But a video released Friday by the Giacobbe family shows four children, including Dominick, lighting fires and kicking a flaming soccer ball together in the backyard.
Nothing in the video shows the other children taking aim at Dominick, who caught fire after kicking or stepping on a plastic cup filled with gasoline that was on fire.
The incident sparked outrage in the community and an outpouring of support for the injured boy, who has since been released from hospital.
Bridgeport’s mayor, first responders and dozens of community members staged a parade outside the hospital where Dominick was recovering, and an online fundraiser has since raised nearly $600,000 for his family.
Giacobbe said Dominick’s mother, Maria Rua, his former neighbor, was supposed to be looking after the children, including his sons Stefano, 8, and Lorenzo, 11, on the day of the incident.
“I saw Maria by the sink wiping the boy’s face with the rag and I saw the skin coming off his face because she was wiping it down. She was yelling at him that she needed to get in the tub because her leg was on fire and she didn’t realize that,” Giacobbe said of the time she returned to the house after running her errands.
“At the same time [she was] making a phone call to the police department, stating that ‘the eight year old boy below took gasoline, poured it on my son and set him on fire’. Those were his exact words.”
The Krankalls said Giaccobe’s son Stefano doused a ball with gasoline, set it on fire and then threw it at Dominick’s face in a vicious act of intimidation that rocked their town and prompted a police investigation.
But Giacobbe claimed Rua’s story is nothing more than fiction, saying surveillance footage showing children playing peacefully “all day” proves what happened was just a horrific accident, not a deliberate attack.
“[They were] playing, riding a bike… there was no kind of bullying with the children,” said the mother, insisting: “My son, Stefano Giacobbe, is not a bully.”
The images show that the children began to play with gasoline and one of them set a soccer ball on fire. In the clip, Dominick is seen kicking the ball and then wiping gasoline on his clothes.
“The [then] he stepped on a cup of gasoline,” Giacobbe said, raising his voice. “The gas went up his leg…it traveled to his face because the fumes were on his face.”
Instead of letting Dominick suffer, as they were accused of doing, Giacobbe said his 11-year-old son rushed to help and kept the burns from getting worse.
“[Lorenzo] took his bare hands and put out the fire on his face, or else he would have been running upstairs with fire on his face because [Rua] I never came down,” said the distraught woman.
Rua “should have been keeping an eye on those children,” Giacobbe charged. “I trusted her to take care of those children.”
The heartbroken mother said she knew her children were innocent, but police asked her to keep the video private until the investigation was over.
The Bridgeport Police Department released a statement June 10 saying there was no evidence to show that Dominick had been bullied or attacked by the other boys.
“There is nothing in the video that portrays either child deliberately hurting the other,” the statement said.
Giacobbe said he later released the video to the media to prove his son’s innocence.
“I don’t want that to stay with him for the rest of his life,” he said. “We want to have a normal life. We don’t have a normal life now.”
After the incident, Giacobbe claimed that his family received several death threats and that police officers were stationed outside his home for three weeks due to the risk.
“Do you know what it feels like to leave your house and you don’t know what’s going to happen from one minute to the next?” she asked.
“[Stefano] I was sad. The children said ‘don’t light a fire for me, we can’t play with you’… he was very upset, very excited. He asked why he was being bothered.
“In the meantime, [Rua’s] building your GoFundMe and wish list from false statements you are posting.”
When contacted by phone Tuesday night, Rua responded to Giacobbe, calling her a “liar” and a “narcissist.”
Rua denied that she was supposed to have been babysitting her neighbor’s children and stood by her son’s account of what happened that day.
“This is my son’s story, not mine. He went through this,” Rua said. “Even Dominick told me ‘Lorenzo helped put out the fire in my face.’ My son is not a liar. He said: ‘Stefano set me on fire, but Lorenzo tried to help me’”.
Rua was skeptical of the surveillance footage released by the Giacobbe family on Tuesday.
“The edited video. It’s all edited. It took a month and a half to come out. Bridgeport police have the actual footage from that day or are supposed to have it,” Rua said.
A Bridgeport Police Department spokesman declined to say whether anyone would face charges for allegedly making false statements.
A GoFundMe representative said the fundraiser is “within GoFundMe’s Terms of Service at this time.”
“Our hearts go out to Dominick as he continues to recover,” said Kelsi Gantt, GoFundMe spokesperson and Northeast Regional Manager.
“Our platform is backed by the GoFundMe Giving Guarantee, which protects donors and their generosity. If any donor wishes to request a refund, we will process it for them.
“It’s important to remember that our team of Trust & Safety experts proactively monitors our platform for any forms of misuse, investigates all reported issues, and also works with law enforcement on any investigations they deem necessary.”
Giacobbe, the fundraiser, apparently created under false pretenses, “disgusting”.
“Give the money back, Maria, to the families that do have very sick children who need the money. Give it to the burn unit. I mean, enough is enough! Giacobbe criticized.
“She made a lie. This was a lie. She used it… she used her son to get that money.”
Reference-nypost.com