For approximately 50 years, Connecticut has allowed pretrial diversion programs to divert people accused of certain criminal offenses from the typical prosecution process, with the goal of preventing the accused from reoffending while sparing them from incarceration. 

“Upon successful completion of these programs, the charges against defendants are dismissed, diverting these individuals from criminal conviction and sentencing,” reads a 2020 report by the Connecticut Sentencing Commission. “When successful, pretrial diversion programs can reduce recidivism among lower-risk individuals while better serving defendants who would otherwise be subject to the disruptive and negative impacts of conventional criminal case processing.”

Started in 1973, Accelerated Rehabilitation (AR) was the first diversionary program in the state and has since remained the most used. In the years since, eight other programs have been introduced by legislation, intending that alleged offenders are not given a “one size fits all” treatment, but are instead provided specialized counseling or programming for the specific crimes they were alleged to have committed. While some programs have been found to successfully reduce recidivism, such as the state’s auto-theft program for juvenile offenders, others have been mired in controversy.

Per state law, AR applies only to individuals accused of crimes which “are not of a serious nature,” and to those “who the court believes will probably not offend in the future.” 

If you ask Greg Gulick, however, a man who has the unique and unfortunate perspective of being both a victim and offender in Connecticut’s criminal justice system, state officials treated his near-fatal stabbing as “not of a serious nature,” and allowed the AR system to be abused.

“They told me the knife was a millimeter from my heart,” said Gulick. “They said if it went a millimeter deeper – it was four inches into my body – if it went a millimeter deeper, I would have just collapsed and died on the spot.”

The 2022 stabbing occurred after the funeral of a 17-year-old boy whom Gulick, a former drug addict himself, was sponsoring for Narcotics Anonymous. For the purpose of this story, that 17-year-old will be referred to as Tyler. Gulick said the altercation began when Michael Martinez, a young man Gulick accused of being Tyler’s drug dealer, accosted Tyler’s brother for the deceased’s drug debts.

That altercation ended with Martinez stabbing Gulick. Despite Gulick being stabbed and Martinez walking away injury-free, Martinez was ultimately granted AR for his role in the altercation. Gulick, on the other hand, received a year in jail for charges stemming both from the fight and the later arson of an abandoned house, a crime Gulick said he wouldn’t have committed were it not for the stabbing. 

Gulick said the painkillers administered to him at the hospital caused him to relapse after being three years sober, kickstarting a six-week bender in which he wound up losing his job, selling his car, burning through $40,000 in savings, and being brought before the court with charges of his own.

“I relapsed, the whole nine; get arrested on felony charges for the first time in my life, I’m all sorts of strung out, I’m withdrawing,” said Gulick. “It just completely annihilated my life. And then he gets off with AR and assault second charges.”

Gulick believes his story shows the inconsistency with which judges apply diversionary programs. In an interview with Inside Investigator, he stressed that he doesn’t wish to complain about how hard he was treated by the courts but instead hoped to highlight the need for consistent treatment across the board.

“The reason why I was able to get my life back together, I feel like, was because the court kept me on a tight leash,” said Gulick. “If they had given me the rope to hang myself at that point in my life, I think I might have. So I told the judge, ‘You guys saved my life by being hard on me. Don’t go easy on this kid and let him go kill another child.’”

Gulick, a 25-year-old resident of Southbury, said he had recently returned home from Maine in 2022 when he began to sponsor Tyler. 

“I had gotten out of the Army and I realized real quickly after the Army that I had a drug problem,” said Gulick. “And so my parents sent me to the Plymouth House in New Hampshire. It’s a rehab up there, a strict 12-step camp. And from there, they sent me to Portland, Maine, where I got about two and a half years sober.”

Gulick said he first cleaned up for a period when he was 18, prior to enlisting, but began using again in the Army, and then cleaned up again after returning from service. He moved back in with his parents after it became unaffordable to live on his own during COVID. While in Maine, Gulick sponsored two other teenagers with addictions, which is why Tyler’s mother, a co-worker of Gulick’s mother, asked her if Gulick would be interested in helping straighten out her son.

“His mother was just like, ‘Hey, can you help my son do what you did?’” said Gulick. “Because I got sober originally at 18, and I had about three years [sobriety] at the time. So that’s when I first met Tyler.”

Gulick said he spent “almost every other day” with Tyler after he became his sponsor, and that the two would frequently go to Narcotics Anonymous, Drug Addicts Anonymous, and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings together. Gulick said Tyler “immediately clicked with me,” and that the two spent almost every day together for the three to four months Gulick spent as his mentor.

“He seemed like he was really trying to get sober,” said Gulick. 

Gulick said he helped Tyler get a job at Stop and Shop and would do “random stuff to take up his time because he didn’t have anything going on besides using drugs in his life.” Gulick said he didn’t drug test Tyler, so he didn’t know for sure at the time whether he was using drugs while he was mentoring him, but he still feels guilty over Tyler’s death.

“I partially blame myself,” said Gulick. “The night before Tyler had died, he asked me to stay over the house with him, and I told him, I felt like that was inappropriate, because I’m an adult, and he’s a child, and he’s my sponsee, right? So, I told him I couldn’t stay the night.”

The day before that, Gulick said Tyler told him he was feeling suicidal. Gulick informed Tyler’s mother and recommended he spend time in a psych ward.

“He told me he was suicidal. I told his mother, she wanted to wait a day to talk to his father,” explained Gulick. “The next night he had asked me to stay the night. I went home, and apparently it was three hours after that he had overdosed.”

Gulick said he received a call the next morning telling him Tyler had overdosed and immediately rushed over to Tyler’s father’s house. After getting no answer at the door, he rushed to Tyler’s mother’s house instead, where he found her crying.

“I’ve lost a lot of people,” said Gulick. “I saw someone get killed in the Army, in the sober house I had a roommate who was hanging in his closet, but this hit me harder than anything else, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever been more destroyed over something.”

Gulick said it hit him especially hard not only because he was his sponsor, but because Tyler was just eleven days away from his 18th birthday.

On October 29, 2022, Gulick attended Tyler’s funeral. He said it was there that Martinez arrived with a group of friends to demand money from Tyler’s brother. 

“So, they show up to this funeral to demand money from the family, and we all kind of shuffle them out the door,” said Gulick. “They leave, and I left too.”

After the funeral, Gulick said he found himself caught in the middle of someone else’s feud. Gulick agreed to take another friend of Tyler’s, Justin Terlaga or JT, to the funeral.

Gulick said JT asked him for a ride to the funeral and a change of clothes, and he helped him out because “he wanted to be there for Tyler.”

“Even though I didn’t really like the kid, I put that aside to give him a ride there,” said Gulick. “He’s just a drug user; he buys the same drugs from Michael Martinez that Tyler was buying.”

Gulick said after the funeral, he agreed to give JT and one of his friends, a 16-year-old at that time, a ride to Tyler’s celebration of life. Gulick said he didn’t know JT’s friend, and to this day doesn’t even know his name, given that court filings left him nameless due to his status as a minor. Gulick said he didn’t know the way, so JT provided him with instructions. What Gulick didn’t know was that JT “had beef with Michael Martinez,” and that he was instructing him to follow Martinez’s group to a diner in Woodbury, for the purpose of confronting them.

“So, we go over to Dottie’s Diner, where they are also there,” alleged Gulick. “So when I pulled in, they got out of their car, came over to my car and started hitting the windows, screaming at us, surrounding the car.”

Gulick said that because his door was unlocked, he wound up getting pulled out of his car and jumped by the group. What happened from then on was a blur to Gulick, who said he didn’t even know he was stabbed until he returned to his car to pursue the group.

“They were getting back in the car to leave,” said Gulick. “I got back in my car to follow them, like I was just attacked. I was about to call the police anyway, but then I looked down, realized I had been stabbed, and so I fell out of my car.”

He called 911 afterwards and said that when the police came with an ambulance, they found him bleeding out on the sidewalk. Gulick said that from that moment forward, he never felt the police gave him a fair shake.

“The cop goes, ‘Well, did you defend yourself?” said Gulick. “And I go, ‘Of course I did.’ And he goes, ‘We’re going to have to look into assault charges then, because you’re not allowed to do that.’”

Gulick said he recognized the officer as one who had pulled him over several weeks prior and said the two had a negative interaction after the officer accused Gulick of tailgating him. Gulick believed the prior interaction, as well as the presence of JT, who had a “pretty lengthy rap sheet” due to his drug use, gave officers the wrong idea. Additionally, officers reported finding drug paraphernalia and a small amount of marijuana in Gulick’s vehicle at the time they responded, which Gulick attributed to JT. 

“Those five kids [who jumped me] were nowhere to be found,” said Gulick. “They had already fled the scene, but they took a look at the kids that were with me and just sort of made a pre-judgment on me, right? Just decided, ‘Yep, he’s definitely the aggressor. He’s hanging out with this drug user. He’s the bad guy. We’re not even going to look at the other kids.’”

Gulick said none of his five assailants were arrested in the wake of his stabbing, but he was made to turn himself in a few weeks after he was released from the hospital.

“They call my house a few weeks later, saying we have an arrest warrant for Gregory, he needs to come and turn himself in, we have a video of the fight” said Gulick. “So I’m freaking out, like how could they have an arrest warrant for me?”

Gulick said that when he went to the station, he thought the video of the fight would lead him to being quickly acquitted of his charges. 

“In the back of my mind, I’m like, ‘Well, they have a video, it’ll show me getting jumped, so that’s no problem,’” said Gulick. “I go and turn myself in and ask the cops, ‘Hey, what’s that with this video that you have that proves that I got jumped?’ They said, ‘We don’t have any video.’”

Inside Investigator FOIA requested any and all videos of the incident from the State’s Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, but have not received a response at this time.

Instead, Gulick said the officers told him the warrant was based on testimony they had already received from his five assailants, who blamed Gulick for starting the fight. Officers told Gulick they got in touch with one of his assailants, who admitted to being in a group chat with the others, who then notified them of the police’s intent to speak to them.

“I feel like they actively dismissed things that would have really impacted the investigation, the fact that they chose not to even look at this group chat where these kids had three or four days to come up with a story to tell the cops,” said Gulick. “To not even look at that but to just come and arrest me — like, I’m the one in a hospital bed with stab wounds, and they’re all fine and dandy.”

Gulick said the arresting officers were to blame for the way others in the justice system treated him. He believes the officers, State Troopers from Troop L based in Litchfield, profiled him, claims they didn’t bother to interview any of Tyler’s family at the funeral to understand the nature of the dispute, and that police told him that because it was his story vs. his assailants’, and there were more of them than him, that the officers had to take their story over his.

“So you’re telling me that if I got five kids together and we went and tried to kill someone, and then we all just said ‘Well he attacked us’, you’re telling me that you would take our word over his, even though he’s lying in a hospital bed and we’re not?,’” Gulick recalled asking the officers. “The cops go, ‘Yeah,’ I go, ‘That’s bullshit, that’s not how that should work.’”

Grieving the death of Tyler and back on drugs, on Dec. 17, 2022, Gulick and two others, who Gulick said were friends of Tyler’s, set fire to a cabin located in the Personnel Village of the Southbury Training School, a historic residential mental institute. The cabins were built to house staff, but most have been abandoned and boarded up as the school has downsized considerably over the years. 

Gulick said the night of the arson, he was “hanging out with these kids” and smoking crack.

“We thought it’d be really cool to light this house on fire, because no one gave a shit about it, since it’s abandoned,” said Gulick. “Turns out they gave a shit.”

Per the News Times, Gulick told police they set the fire “in memorial” to a friend who overdosed. Gulick said the friend “had been into haunted houses and was a pyromaniac, so he would kill two birds with one stone.” For the arson, Gulick was originally charged with third-degree arson, third-degree criminal trespass and conspiracy to commit first-degree criminal mischief. When police first interviewed him, on Dec. 19, 2022, he admitted to entering Personnel Village the night of the fire, but denied setting it. The next time police spoke with him, on Dec. 20, he admitted to setting the fire.

Police came to his house to take him in for his arson charge on Jan. 4, 2023. He fled on foot into nearby woods, where he was ultimately found and arrested. Gulick claims that the troopers who came to arrest him, came in full-force.

“I’ve never seen that many cops in a GTA [Grand Theft Auto] game,” said Gulick.”They had people in the trees, they had SWAT vans. They literally swatted my house; they kicked in the doors, threw smoke bombs. I thought they were coming to kill me, like a fucking kill squad came into my house.”

Gulick said that his arson charge ended up getting rolled into the prior assault charge on his court docket, making his legal troubles all the worse.

“They arrested me for the arson charge, that’s a much bigger crime than assault,” said Gulick. “But what they do is they put the assault charge on the same docket as the arson, and when they give me a plea deal for the arson, they say you have to plead guilty to the assault.”

Gulick said he was “screaming at my attorney,” as he didn’t think he was guilty of committing assault. He noted that the penalty for arson, which in Connecticut is always considered a felony, carried a more considerable penalty than third-degree assault, but that he was still more frustrated that the assault charges, if he accepted them, meant he couldn’t pursue his assailants in civil court.

“He’s [his attorney] like ‘Well, it’s either you plead guilty to the assault, or you take this heavy charge to trial,’” said Gulick. “So I pled guilty to the assault, which they said stops me from going after any of these kids. Now they’re the victims in their own jumping which is super messed up.”

On Jan. 1, 2024, the day Gulick pleaded guilty to the charges, he said he was pulled aside before entering the courtroom and asked to plead guilty to an additional charge; conspiracy to commit arson.

“At the last second, literally five minutes before I walked up in front of the judge, my lawyer was already standing up there, they walked up and whispered in my attorney’s ear,” alleges Gulick. “He pulls me out of the hall and said, ‘You have to plead guilty to conspiracy as well.’”

Gulick said the prosecution needed him to plead guilty to conspiracy so that they could “go after” the other two people with Gulick on the night of the arson. If he didn’t agree to plead to conspiracy, Gulick said his plea deal would be dropped entirely.

“So they backed us into a corner at the last second where I had to plead guilty to conspiracy,” said Gulick. “The moment I pleaded guilty to conspiracy, I think it was three days later, they dropped both the girls’ charges. It was pointless, just to get a second felony on me and screw me even more.”

Gulick was told that if he didn’t plead guilty to the assault, arson and conspiracy charges, he would face 17 years for the arson alone and then have to take the assault charge to trial. The bright side, said Gulick, was that after pleading guilty he was sent to court-ordered rehab, something he believes saved his life.

“I think if I was never arrested for the arson, I don’t think I would have been here today to talk to you about it,” said Gulick. “Had I kept going down that path if the court didn’t stop me? I think I would have died, so I am blessed that I was able to get the help that I needed.”

Ultimately, Gulick was given a six-year sentence, with five years suspended, meaning he only had to spend one year in prison. After six months incarcerated, Gulick was released for good behavior, placed on parole, and granted court-ordered rehab.

On Oct. 10, 2024, Gulick attended Martinez’s AR hearing, where he was allowed to share a victim impact statement. During the meeting, Gulick retraced his steps leading up to the altercation and took the occasion to poke holes in the court’s narrative.

Gulick said of the fight that he “couldn’t really see what was going on in front of me and I was terrified for my life.” They tried to drag Terlaga out of the vehicle too, said Gulick, but his door was locked.

The account accepted by officers stated that the unnamed 16-year-old friend of Terlaga’s approached the group with a machete which Gulick, who worked as a landscaper and lawn service provider at the time, kept in his car. Martinez used this version of events to claim self-defense for the stabbing.

“There is an allegation that the third individual in the car, the juvenile, had taken the machete from under the passenger’s seat out of the car and had gotten out and raised it at one of them,” said Gulick. 

Gulick said that if this were true, it didn’t help the defendant’s argument for self-defense, as the allegedly machete-wielding juvenile was left unscathed while Gulick, who claimed to be defenseless at the time, left with stab wounds.

“The defendant says that he was intimidated by this other person feet away,” said Gulick. “I had no idea that he had even gotten out of the car and I was shocked to hear it just because I ended up being the one getting stabbed while I was already on the ground, getting punched and kicked.”

Gulick also said that as of Oct. 7, 2024, he was 20 months clean. He also accused Martinez of still dealing drugs, despite the death of Tyler. 

“During that time [rehab], I’d been asking people around that know Martinez and know the people that he hangs out with and I’ve come to learn that he continues to sell the same pills that killed the child Tyler,” said Gulick at the hearing. “As early as just these past couple weeks.” 

Martinez’s defense attorney, Daniel DiBartolomeo, admitted Martinez “used to be associated with people that did have to do with selling drugs and stuff like that, but my client is not a drug dealer and he’s not involved in any of that.”

He said Martinez had been working at Big Y “for months now,” and that he’s stopped associating himself with drug-dealers. 

“My client has been adamant, and he’s given statements about this, that on the other side of the vehicle, he was approached by two individuals one with a machete, and my client wouldn’t have known that unless the machete was actually out wielding the statement from the victim was that the machete was under the floor of a car and the victim were coming at him.”

“I’m sure if he could take it back, he would, however, in fear of his life, especially with one of the individuals wielding a machete, he took defensive measures to try to save his own life,” said DiBartolomeo. “Immediately after that, the first vehicle that left the scene was the vehicle with the victim in it and then the other three cars that my client was in left.”

DiBartolomeo said the court also had video of members of Gulick’s party following the vehicle after the original altercation, trying to “kick it or punch it while it was at a traffic light.” 

“I’m saying all of this not to make excuses, obviously, my client is sorry for the role that he did with this, but to lay the facts from our perspective” said DiBartolomeo. He said the video shows Martinez, “was not an instigator, he did not do anything to escalate the situation except for acting in self-defense, and as I’ve stated, he wishes he could take [it] back and there were no injuries.”

Assistant State’s Attorney Jessica Grey interjected in disagreement, saying that surveillance video at the diner showed Martinez’s group exiting their vehicle and approaching Gulick’s car.

“So, at that point in time, they do appear to instigate that confrontation,” said Grey. 

DiBartolomeo said the fact that Gulick followed Martinez to the diner was the instigation he was referring to. DiBartolomeo said that he thought Martinez “should be a candidate, a good candidate” for AR. DiBartolomeo stated that he’d provided the court with letters from Martinez’s grandmother, as well as from a Timothy Martinez and from a Sandra Martinez, which he said, “talk about the same thing.”

“They understand that my client is facing very serious charges but also wanted to relate to the court the type of person that Mr. Martinez is, which is far from perfect but somebody that is working on doing the right things and trying to stay out of trouble and is staying out of trouble,” said DiBartolomeo. “He’s never been arrested before.”

Grey said that the state did not believe AR should be applicable for the stabbing.

“The state does object to the use of the program based on the seriousness of the charge, the nature of the victim’s injuries,” said Grey. “This did appear to be a hand-to-hand combat style altercation that Mr. Martinez responded with in the state’s [defendant] with deadly force, so.”

Grey noted that Gulick’s stabbing left him with a broken rib and a punctured abdomen that “caused an air pocket that had to be surgically repaired and stitched closed.” 

The judge, Jane Grossman, ruled that there were “multiple credible versions of what happened,” and that “the videos are inconsistent with some of those versions.”

“Actually, the videos are in some ways inconsistent with everybody’s version,” said Grossman. “It may, in fact, be a difficult case for the state to prove. There’s a possibility of a credible self-defense claim. There’s some credible evidence that the defendant is in the car with a weapon. It’s a very messy case. Not that the state couldn’t prove a messy case, but it’s difficult for the state to prove.”

Martinez’s age, the event being “confusing to say the least,” the fact that the case had been on the docket for a year, and Martinez’s lack of “additional problems” since the case was brought to court were factors Grossman listed as supporting her decision to grant Martinez AR.

“I appreciate that the victim was seriously injured,” Grossman said. “It’s not a small matter for that person; it’s a serious event. His hospitalization, his treatment, his relapse and those are all very, very moving and important criteria for him.”

“It’s hard to parse out what happened,” said Grossman. “And the charges are not so serious that, I think, they’re inappropriate for accelerated rehabilitation.”

Ultimately, “while there are concerns on both sides and I think they’re valid,” said Grossman, she still thought the program was “appropriate,” and granted Martinez two years of AR.

Inside Investigator made multiple requests for comment to Martinez vis his attorney but received no response.

Grey requested that the AR come with the condition of substance abuse evaluation and random drug testing and also asked if the court would consider requiring Martinez to pay restitution for Gulick’s “large amount of out-of-pocket medical expenses.” DiBartolomeo asked the judge to consider that Martinez and his family are already encumbered by his legal fees, “which weren’t that much,” and the fact that Martinez works at Big Y, which “doesn’t pay all that much.” Grey said the medical bills were $6k, and DiBartolomeo said he didn’t want “his client to be set up to be violated because he couldn’t pay that full amount.”

Grossman stipulated that Martinez would be responsible for paying Gulick’s $6,000 restitution, “verified by probation.” Additional conditions added to Martinez’s AR were that he couldn’t be rearrested and couldn’t have probable cause for a new arrest. He also could not possess any weapons, couldn’t contact Gulick, was required to complete 100 hours of community service and a substance abuse evaluation as well “as any treatment recommended.” Lastly, Grossman stipulated that he write Gulick an apology letter.

“This is a life changing event for you,” said Grossman. “It’s a life changing event for him, so you’re going to write a letter of apology to the victim.”

Gulick said that he already has given up hope of ever seeing his $6,000.

“He paid $100 and then went to a mental hospital and wrote me a letter about how he can’t get me the rest of the money,” said Gulick. “He’s not gonna pay a dime. He’s gonna wait till the end of his two years and then take, like, whatever three months jail they give him.”

Gulick said that despite the anchor all of this turmoil has thrown in his life, he has since turned things around. He has regained his three years’ sobriety, has started his own roofing company, bought his own house, and has “been working from the ground up.”

“Things have been really good recently,” said Gulick.

Gulick felt his arson case was handled properly, but still feels he was made out to be the perpetrator of a crime he didn’t commit when he was made to plead guilty to assault. He also felt as though it wasn’t right that he was made to serve jail time over a non-violent property crime, while the person who almost killed him was given AR.

“I find it baffling this Michael Martinez kid, he’s arrested on a violent crime and given AR,” said Gulick. I’m going to prison for a non-violent offense while this guy who gets arrested for trying to kill people and he’s selling kids drugs, he gets AR, like — that doesn’t make sense to me.”

Gulick believed his stabbing was far too serious a crime to warrant AR, and that the measure allowed Martinez to skirt accountability. He said that the court saved his life by holding him accountable, and he worried that without the same level of accountability, Martinez will continue to “push fentanyl-laced Xanax to minors.”

“I don’t think they should have gone lighter on me,” said Gulick. “I just think that there was no justice for anything, as far as the Martinez case.”

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