


The man accused of punching a woman no less than seven times in the face because she did not tell him “Good morning” has been found dangerous and will be detained for 120 days.
“When people say good morning to you, you should say ‘Hi,’ you crazy (expletive),” Ian Atkinson allegedly said to his alleged victim, a 59-year-old woman who at the time prosecutors say was watering her shrubs on Balsam Street in Dorchester after getting home from an overnight shift on July 13.
Atkinson, 33, of Dorchester, appeared Tuesday morning in municipal court in Dorchester for a dangerousness hearing. Judge Maureen Flaherty ordered Atkinson detained for 120 days.
Assistant District Attorney Michael Tomasini said Atkinson got out of his Mercedes sedan parked in the area of the alleged victim’s home, walked over and then, “unprovoked,” assaulted her as she was singing. The punches, according to a hospital report summarized by the prosecutor at the hearing, left her with a fractured nose, subconjunctival hemorrhage to her left eye and multiple contusions. She was treated at Carney Hospital, according to the DA’s office.
Defense attorney John Hightower says that there was a “slight scuffle,” but insisted that the alleged victim in the case was the aggressor and that his client was simply defending himself.
Hightower said the woman walked up and started recording Atkinson and his car with her phone without his permission, which Hightower said is in violation of the state’s two-party consent wiretap law. Atkinson got out of his car and asked her to stop, according to Hightower, and then the woman sprayed him with her water hose and then bit him on his arm, to which Atkinson defended himself.
“When someone hits you seven times, breaks your nose, leaves multiple contusions, it can be hard to remember the one counter-blow you were able to land,” prosecutor Tomasini said.
Hightower had objections to the majority or all of the prosecution’s 11 prospective exhibits.
Among those exhibits are the police reports and dockets for two prior incidents: a 2012 armed robbery that Atkinson pleaded guilty to in 2014 and a pending Suffolk Superior Court case in which he is accused of pulling a gun on his significant other, his sister and his sister’s significant other, a case for which he was on GPS monitoring. It also includes a probation report that Tomasini said presents “a history of drug abuse and violent conduct.”
But it was the two videos of the incident that Hightower objected to most, including an iPhone-recorded version of security footage in which he says at least 2 seconds is missing that could indicate that the alleged victim was the aggressor.
“If she truly believed that Mr. Atkinson was the initial aggressor, she would have left and not remained in the street and continued doing what she was doing,” he said.