Man, 21, cited for disorderly conduct again

Twice in one week, Orono police charged a minor league baseball player affiliated with the Seattle Mariners with disorderly conduct.

Steven Richard, 21, of Billerica, Mass., was also charged early Friday morning with assault for the incident outside the Orchard Trails apartment complex. Richard apparently became upset that several men had been looking at his girlfriend and were muttering something as he, his girlfriend and her roommates were walking home from Ushuaia about 1:30 a.m. Friday.

The 6-foot-3, 230-pound Richard confronted the three men, yelling at them and trying to start a fight, Orono police Officer Chris Foxworthy was told. Richard knocked a soda can out of one man’s hands. Located at his girlfriend’s apartment, Richard claimed he had been home an hour and sleeping and knew nothing of the incident.

One week earlier, on Sept. 8, Richard was charged with disorderly conduct after it was reported he tried to pick a fight with some men, apparently for looking at his girlfriend. The men had gone inside the apartment, leaving Richard outside pounding on the door and windows, Sgt. Josh Ewing said Friday.

Richard was an eighth-round pick of the Seattle Mariners in the June 2006 amateur baseball draft after completing his junior year as a relief pitcher at Clemson (S.C.) University. Richard played for two seasons at the University of Maine before transferring to Clemson.

Out of apparent frustration at the Boston Red Sox, animosity toward the New York Yankees or both, a shirt was doused by an unidentified individual or individuals late Thursday night with lighter fluid and ignited as a group of 20 to 30 people outside an Orono apartment complex looked on.

A second shirt was apparently set on fire, but by the time police were called, the crowd had dispersed. A cup of water had been used to put out the fire, reported Sgt. Josh Ewing with the Orono Police Department.

A witness reported that while the shirt was burning, the group was chanting “Yankees suck.”

As part of bail conditions stemming from a criminal threatening charge, a Charleston man wasn’t supposed to have contact with a woman listed on the bail condition. But Friday, Alan Fournier, 36, of Charleston was seen sitting with the woman in Penobscot County Superior Court in Bangor and a court security officer told police that she had her arms around Fournier.

Bangor police Officer Paul Colley reported that Fournier’s bail was revoked in court and he was returned to the Penobscot County Jail.

– COMPILED BY BDN REPORTER DOUG KESSELI