A Garden City Park fire chief was arrested Wednesday night after he threatened to kill his ex-girlfriend, according to court documents.
First Assistant Chief Matthew Flood said “I am going to f—–g kill you and murder you” to the woman, Angela Alday, around 8:31 p.m. at the Mineola house they bought together, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday.
Flood also faces three other charges stemming from an April 30 incident in which he yelled at Alday and her teenage daughter, broke Alday’s cellphone and punched her television, according to separate criminal complaints.
A video of that incident Alday provided to Blank Slate Media shows Flood yelling at her and slapping her cellphone out of her hand. A person who Alday said is her daughter can be heard screaming and crying in the background.
No one was hurt in that incident, a Nassau County Police Department spokeswoman said.
Flood pleaded not guilty Thursday at First District Court in Hempstead to a second-degree harassment charge for threatening to kill Alday, along with two counts of third-degree criminal mischief and one count of endangering the welfare of a child in connection with the April 30 incident.
Judge Norman St. George released Flood, 38, without bail and issued a do-not-harass order forbidding him from threatening Alday or her daughter. He is due back in court Aug. 7.
Family Court Judge Conrad Singer also issued an order of protection Thursday afternoon.
Flood’s attorney, Michael Franzese, said the fire chief fully denies the allegations.
“There are no witnesses to this allegation,” Franzese said after Flood’s arraignment. “The damage in question that she’s alleging my client committed was actually his own property.”
Alday said Flood had been violent toward her on a couple other occasions. She said he thinks his stature as a fire chief allowed him to avoid arrest for more than two months after he lashed out at her and her daughter.
“I feel like because he is the Garden City Park fire chief that he is getting special treatment,” Alday said outside the District Court on Thursday.
Franzese said he had no knowledge of why Flood was not arrested closer to the April 30 incident. The Police Department spokeswoman said she had no information about the timing of the arrest.
Alday was hoping for the court to issue a full restraining order against Flood, she said.
Alday said she and Flood got married in the summer of 2015 and bought the Mineola house a year later.
But Flood was still legally married to another woman at the time of his wedding to Alday, she said. Alday no longer lives at the Mineola house, but Flood still resides there, she said.
Flood asked a Nassau County Family Court judge for an order of protection on May 2, alleging that Alday injured him and broke the TV in the altercation, according to documents Alday provided. But Judge Conrad Singer dismissed the petition with prejudice May 10 because Flood did not show up in court to make his case, while Alday and her daughter did.
Flood took over in January as the second-in-command of the Garden City Park Fire Department. In 2016 he was found guilty of disciplinary charges for altering fire call attendance records.
He and Augie Carnevale, the department’s top chief, pledged to revamp the department this year by increasing morale and community engagement, saying it had previously languished under what they called bad leadership.
Carnevale declined to comment on the charges against Flood because “it’s so fresh I haven’t even looked” at them, he said.
It would be up to the fire department’s three-member Board of Commissioners to decide whether to remove Flood from his position as chief, Carnevale said.
Flood is an effective fire department leader who never showed any signs of an anger problem, Carnevale said.
“It’s unfortunate,” Carnevale said. “I’ve met his wife, a very nice lady. I know Matt, I think he’s a nice guy.”
Carnevale had no knowledge of Flood’s prior marriage or of the alleged April 30 incident, he said.
Flood does not have any prior criminal charges, according to a search of online court records.
