Pair accused of beating motel resident with baseball bat

MONROE-Two men are being held on $50,000 cash bail each after a vicious assault with a baseball bat on a 47-year old man at the James Motel Monday night. Monroe Police said the assault was triggered by a fight earlier in the day at the motel between Brian Mann and the victim. Mann sustained a black eye but no charges were pressed against his attacker. Mann, who lives in Harriman, went home. Police said his 18-year-old son, Christopher, was upset when he saw his father's swollen black-and-blue eye and stewed about it all afternoon. Then he and Gregory DeGraw, 30, of Suffern, decided to do something about it, saying they couldn't let it go unpunished, according to police. Reports from the Monroe Police describe what happened next: Sometime after 7 p.m., Degraw and Mann left Harriman bent on revenge for the assault. Armed with a baseball bat and knife, they walked back to the motel and confronted the victim in the courtyard. They chased him when he started to run away and pummelled him in the head with the bat until a motel resident stopped the beating and called police. At 9 p.m. the unconscious victim, whose name has not been released, was airlifted from St. Paul's Lutheran Church parking lot on Still Road to Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla via a STAT Flight helicopter. He remains in intensive care. Meanwhile, a police helicopter was brought in around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning to assist in the search for the attackers. One resident let police search his backyard shed for the suspects. The search was called off after no one was spotted. Tuesday morning, though, police discovered the bat and the knife along Route 17M. The knife, police made a point of saying, was not used in the attack. After learning police had followed several leads on their possible locations, the suspects turned themselves in Tuesday afternoon . Police said Christopher Mann called his mother, who drove down to Spring Valley in Rockland County to pick up the pair and then drove them back to the police station. Degraw and the younger Mann were charged with first-degree assault, a felony, and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, a misdemeanor. They were arraigned before Judge Jack Rosenthal in Monroe Town Court and are in Orange County Jail, pending a court appearance.