A Ridley Park woman identified as the “Delco Pooper,” who following a traffic dispute in Prospect Park last month was held over for court Monday on all charges stemming from the incident.
Christina Marie Solometo, 44, of the 700 block of East Chester Pike in Ridley Park, was originally charged with indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, criminal mischief, harassment and depositing waste on the highway following her arrest May 2.
Assistant District Attorney Dareus Chen added one count of open lewdness at the outset of the preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Mary Hopper. That was also held for court.
Identified in court
Chen called only one witness, 17-year-old Greg Ferrari, who captured the moment Solometo allegedly defecated on the other person’s vehicle on a cellphone video that went wildly viral within days and led directly to Solometo’s arrest.
Ferrari said he was heading to a friend’s house when he was stopped at Fourth and Madison avenues by two drivers in the midst of an apparent dispute.
One car was in the intersection and the other was stopped at a stop sign behind them, he said. The drivers appeared to be yelling at each other, so he pulled out his phone and started filming, thinking he might see a fight.
What he captured was not a physical confrontation, however, but one of the participants “going to the bathroom” on the hood of the other driver’s vehicle.
That video was played in court for the judge. Solometo had a wry grin as the video played and some other members of the audience smiled at the audio of the encounter as well.
Ferrari identified the defecator in court as Solometo. He said she walked directly toward the other vehicle, pulled down her pants or shorts, and defecated on the other car, then got back into her own car and drove off.
On cross-examination by defense counsel David Howard Klayman, Ferrari said the other driver appeared to be tense and angry, and had called Solometo insulting names.
‘I pooped on her car’
According to an affidavit of probable cause for Solometo’s arrest written by Prospect Park Police Sgt. Henry O’Neill, Solometo told police she believed the other vehicle was following her that day.
Solometo said she was heading north on Lincoln Avenue and was the fifth car in line to turn left at the traffic light onto Fourth Avenue, according to the affidavit. Three cars went through on the green arrow, she said, but the car directly in front of her, a silver sedan, did not move.
Solometo began honking and the driver of the other vehicle began mocking her in the rear-view mirror, she told O’Neill. Solometo said she was frustrated and having stomach issues, so she pulled around the vehicle and turned left.
Solometo said she continued toward Madison on Fourth when she noticed the other vehicle appeared to be following her. She said she stopped her vehicle and exited, then had an exchange with the other driver.
“Solometo said as she was walking back to her car, the driver of the silver sedan called her a (insulting name), which made her angry,” according to the affidavit. “Solometo said, ‘I wanted to punch her in the face, but I pooped on her car instead and went home.’ ”
O’Neill and Prospect Park Police Chief Dave Madonna went to Solometo’s Chester Pike address on May 2 to discuss the matter further, and she confirmed the details from the earlier conversation.
“It was a clean poop,” she added. “I didn’t even have to wipe.”
Solometo was taken into custody at that time. In video of her arrest posted online, she told someone who asked what she had to eat that day, “I have a sickness.”
Attorneys argue
Klayman did not present any testimony, but argued that many requisite elements of the charges had not been made out during Ferrari’s testimony, including the exposure of sex organs in the indecent exposure charge, the course of conduct needed for harassment or the intent to create a disturbance necessary for disorderly conduct.
Klayman acknowledge that his client could have handled the interaction better, but said the commonwealth also has to be careful about how it charges criminal cases and appeared to have overreached here.
Chen responded that many of the charges should be held just out of common sense. If a person faces away from a vehicle, pulls their pants down and bends at a 90-degree angle, he argued, they are going to expose their sex organs to the driver of that vehicle.
Solometo also created a “physically offensive condition” and engaged in a course of conduct to “annoy and alarm another” with respect to the disorderly conduct and harassment charges, Chen said.
The judge took a few minutes to consider the case and found Chen had made out a prima facie case for each of the charges. She set formal arraignment for July 2 at the county courthouse in Media.
All over the media
“It’s something that you’d never expect,” Ferrari told reporters outside the district court on the 1000 block of Lincoln Avenue in Prospect Park on Monday after the hearing. “It’s been kind of crazy.”
Ferrari, an Interboro junior, said he was not expecting the video to blow up, but it did get him out of school to testify and he got a few likes on Instagram out of it.
“I had to take a picture at a grad party with a bunch of people,” he said. “Maybe I’ll have to make some merch. Make a shirt or two.”
Solometo was less talkative when she emerged from the court a few minutes later with a security detail and walked to a waiting car.
Klayman did stop to answer a few questions and said his client has received threats to both herself and her child, and that she is not someone who is used to being in the spotlight, especially under these circumstances.
“It’s all over the media,” he said. “There’s people making T-shirts, hats, making threating comments. It’s not something … when we’re talking about a person, just because it’s not your best day, doesn’t mean that you should be harassed continuously, OK?”
Klayman said he believed his client had been overcharged and this incident was probably something that could have been more appropriately handled with summary charges, but he hopes to get the case to a result that’s fair and just, now that it is headed for common pleas court.
Solometo remains free on $1,000 cash bail.
