2D WOMAN ACCUSES CELTICS' WEBB OF ATTACKING HER

March 18, 1993

2D WOMAN ACCUSES CELTICS' WEBB OF ATTACKING HER

Marcus Webb, the Celtics forward who was charged on Monday with assaulting the mother of his son, has been ordered to stay away from another woman who says he attacked her a week ago.

The second woman, Ericka G. Gomes of Dorchester, obtained the restraining order against Webb on Monday after telling a Dorchester District Court judge that Webb accosted her at the Harbor Club in the hours after midnight last Thursday.

Gomes said she told the judge that Webb yanked her hair and grabbed her hard enough to leave a bruise the size of his palm on her upper arm. She said that at around 3:30 the same morning, Webb came to her house uninvited, picked her up and threatened to throw her over the porch railing.

At his Waltham apartment yesterday, Webb said, "I don't know nothing about" Gomes' allegations, declining further comment. Waltham Police Lt. Kenneth Rautenberg said last night that he knew of the order, but that the department had not served Webb because it had not yet received the official paperwork.

Gomes, an Emerson College senior, says she dated Webb briefly and casually this year, but she broke off the relationship about a week before the alleged attack. Gomes and Webb are 22.

"He grabbed me, and he kept saying, 'What do you want from me?' " said Gomes, who encountered Webb on the night of the alleged assault while she was waiting for a girlfriend who was at the nightclub with her. "I said, 'Marcus, you need help,' and I walked away and he grabbed me again and said, 'Don't you walk away from me.'

"He had been drinking. I just think he has a problem with the word, 'No.' It fuels him."

Gomes has not pressed charges against Webb, which are not needed to get a restraining order.

Gomes' allegations are the latest in a string of problems besetting the rookie, whose future with the Celtics appears to be in jeopardy.

Most recently, Waltham police were called to his apartment about 2 a.m. Monday. There, Quientina Brown, the mother of Webb's 13-month-old son, told police that Webb had slapped her on the left side of the face and thrown her to the floor. Webb, who is 6 feet 9 inches and weighs 255 pounds, entered no plea to the misdemeanor charge.

Webb has been on the Celtics' injured list since Dec. 29 with a broken thumb that the Celtics say he got while cracking his knuckles before a game two days earlier. He was left off the team's current four-game Western swing after reportedly lying to coach Chris Ford about obtaining a valid driver's license.

Webb's license became an issue after he claimed he missed a Jan. 8 team practice and doctor's exam because police had stopped him on Route 9 that morning. No police department record of the incident could be found , and it turned out that Alabama had revoked Webb's license.

Gomes stressed that the timing of her restraining order was coincidental; when she went to court on Monday, she said she had not yet heard about the allegations by Brown, an Alabama resident who was visiting Webb.

"I feel sorry for Marcus, and I don't hate him," said Gomes, who is 5 feet 3 and weighs 119 pounds. "Marcus' problems go far deeper than his problems with fame. Marcus has a problem with ego. He feels like he's above the law, that he's unstoppable."

Gomes said many people witnessed his alleged attacks on her, including club employees, a police officer working a private detail and Celtics forward Alaa Abdelnaby, who she said told Webb at one point to leave her alone. Abdelnaby could not be reached yesterday.

Celtics executive vice president Jan Volk declined comment, saying only that he was unaware of the incidents or that Webb was under a restraining order.

Patrick Gibbons, general manager of the spacious Harbor Club on Northern Avenue, said he did not know of any such altercation, adding that "any time there's a problem, we're there."

Gomes said she was "really humiliated because no one stopped it. It felt like he's a Celtic and he can do whatever he wants and no one cares. The first time he pulled my hair and I screamed, I actually embarrassed myself by screaming. My instincts told me to grab his head and dig my nails in, so I did."

About 40 minutes after Gomes returned to the Dorchester duplex that she shares with a roommate and the roommate's family, she said, the phone rang. It was Webb, allegedly demanding that she have food ready because he was coming over.

"He said he was coming over to beat my (expletive)," Gomes said. "I thought he was drunk and just trying to make me afraid. I figured I was safe at home."

A half hour or so later, around 3:30 a.m., Gomes said Webb began ringing the doorbell, threatening to wake the neighbors unless she spoke with him. Frightened, she went to the door with a bag of potato chips, which he had demanded.

Webb left quietly, but returned a short time later. The bell woke her roommate's aunt, who went to the door to tell him to leave, Gomes said. Gomes then went to the door, and he allegedly pulled her outside.

"He commenced to grab me and he was tearing at my clothes and he's just crazy, that's all," Gomes said. "He had me up against the railing (of the first-floor porch), he picked me up and he said, 'I'm going to throw you over.'

"I said, 'Go ahead, you have the advantage. I'm no match for you.' And he put me down."

Gomes said she tried to get a restraining order Friday, but got to the court too late. The one she now carries with her everywhere forbids Webb from coming within 200 yards.