Nantucket Police Respond To Second Machete Assault

An incident that prompted a large Nantucket Police Department response to the Nobadeer Beach parking lot on June 1 involved another alleged assault with a machete, according to records obtained by the Current through a Freedom of Information Request.

It was the second assault involving a machete on Nantucket in the span of just three days. The alleged victim told police that he was sitting in his van in the beach parking lot when he was robbed of his keys, wallet, and cellphone by a man armed with a machete. The victim said he avoided “being struck across the body by grabbing the machete with his hand.”

On the evening of June 1, Nantucket Police Department cruisers swarmed the Nobadeer Beach parking lot when a passerby called 911 after observing the victim yelling “I was just robbed!” The victim told the responding officers his side of the story and described his assailant while adding that the man had fled the scene by running into a nearby dwelling.

A team of officers then “made entry and completed a methodical search” of the dwelling but found no one. They discovered footprints leading to another residence, and made entry into a second dwelling believing the suspect was hiding inside but again found nothing after an extensive search.

The officers determined the suspect was no longer in the area and returned to the parking lot to interview the alleged victim further about what went down. The police report, which was heavily redacted, states there was a language barrier between the victim and the officers, but he was able to convey his side of the story.

The alleged victim had been at Nobadeer “to drink beers and hang out at the beach” with a friend. It’s unclear due to the redactions in the police report, but the alleged assailant may have also been at the beach with them before the altercation occurred in the parking lot. The alleged victim “proceeded to provide multiple different versions of how the evening’s events took place, creating endless inconsistencies on how the alleged robbery had occurred," the report stated.

Following the interview, police identified and reached out to the alleged assailant, who claimed he was the one who was assaulted with a machete and defended himself after attempting to take his friend’s car keys “so he couldn’t drive away while drunk.” He told officers he threw the machete in a gray dumpster at a construction site near the Nobadeer Beach parking lot, allowing officers to go back to the scene and confiscate it as evidence.

A third unidentified person who was involved in the altercation was also detained and interviewed by police. He also stated that the parties involved were “extremely intoxicated” and the altercation began after one of them took the keys to the van so the owner could not drive away drunk.

Due to the conflicting stories, no arrests were made, but the machete was confiscated.

The incident occurred just three days after another alleged assault involving a machete on Cliff Road. In that case, Somers Simeon Donaldson, 62, was arrested on a single charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Police alleged that Donaldson attacked a co-worker with a machete at a job site following an argument over Donaldson not doing work that he was paid to do. In that case, police recovered a blood-stained machete at the scene.