By Joe Dolinsky
The Times-Leader
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — The scar remains visible on Francis William Petroski’s face, but the veteran correctional officer says it was the fallout from a convicted killer’s prison knife-slashing that cut deepest.
The longtime SCI Dallas correctional officer announced his retirement following Joel Perez’s conviction Wednesday afternoon by a Luzerne County jury, citing a life changed and a career cut short due to the brazen ambush.
Perez’s attack, Petroski said, “cost him a career that I would have continued on with had this incident not occurred.”
Perez, 42, was convicted on all five counts related to the April 27, 2014, ambush on Petroski inside the medium-security prison. The jury returned its verdict at about 1:15 p.m., less than an hour after deliberations were forced to restart due to a juror’s excusal.
Perez did not react as the jury foreman read off the verdict slip.
Petroski, 45, of Dallas, said the attack strained his personal relationships, changed the man he once was and fed into his decision to walk away from a nearly 17-year career as a corrections officer.
“It has kept me on edge watching my back,” Petroski, a former member of the U.S. Army National Guard, said in a written statement. “It has brought on negativity that wasn’t there previously.”
Perez, serving a life sentence for a 1995 murder in Lancaster County, whispered something in Petroski’s ear and slashed the right side of his face with a toothbrush handle embedded with a pair of razor blades.
Assistant District Attorney Michelle Hardik said the attack seriously injured Petroski and disfigured him for life. The scar, she said in her closing argument Wednesday morning, serves as a reminder of the ambush each time Petroski looks into a mirror.
Petroski and several fellow correctional officers that took the stand during the three-day trial identified Perez as the attacker. They say he fled down the prison’s main corridor before being taken to the ground and subdued.
Perez, however, has maintained his innocence, saying Tuesday he is being “used as a scapegoat” because correctional officers inside the prison failed to protect themselves. Perez, who represented himself, claimed he had no motive to attack Petroski, who previously regarded him as a “quiet, church-going man.”