Little League coach Chad Dellaripa said he never thought his baseball team’s season would end with him getting hit in the head with an aluminum baseball bat.
Dellaripa said the attack happened in front of the players, his 5-year-old daughter, and the team mom.
“My daughter was so scared she urinated in her pants,” Dellaripa said. “He already had the bat in his hand and he went from zero to a hundred it was pretty bad.”
Clearwater police charged Yoandy Padilla-Hernandez with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Dellaripa said he told Padilla-Hernandez’s son to put his bag in the dugout while they went to get food. At some point, Dellaripa said he reprimanded the player for not following the rules. When the player got upset, he ran to his father crying.
According to the report, Padilla-Hernandez told police that Dellaripa “put hands on his son.” Dellaripa said that never happened.
“I said, ‘Coach is not mad at you, we have to listen to coach the first time,’” Dellaripa said.
But, Dellaripa said the parent must have felt something happened the way he reacted. He said he wished cooler heads would’ve prevailed.
“It was all over something a little incident that could've been resolved with ‘hey coach’ you grabbing your son by the hand and coming over to me and saying, ‘Hey coach I want to talk to you.’”
Dellaripa said he wants to use this as a learning experience for his players, that “violence is not the answer putting your hands on somebody is not the answer.”
In 2011, Delllaripa had to go to anger management and do community service after he was arrested for domestic violence. Dellaripa said he learned his own tough lessons and that is one of the reasons why he wanted to speak out about what happened to him. To turn a negative, into a positive.
"I'm just not out teaching baseball I am teaching right from wrong, ups and downs, good sportsmanship,” Dellaripa said. “I am trying to teach life goals. If you want to be something in life it takes a lot of heart and dedication.”
Police say Padilla fled the scene after the May 6 attack and was arrested at his home 10 days later. No one answered Padilla-Hernandez’s door for comment.
