A Long Beach man faces seven criminal charges after allegedly breaking into an East Hills home, pushing a woman down a flight of stairs, and violating an active order of protection on the afternoon of Saturday, April 25.
Nassau County police responded to a 911 call at a residence on Canterbury Lane in East Hills at approximately 5:28 p.m. Detectives identified the suspect as Shawn Morgenroth, 43, of Long Beach. The victim is a 39-year-old woman whose name has not been released.
According to investigators, Morgenroth entered the woman’s home without permission. The two got into a verbal dispute that escalated. He allegedly took her cellphone by force, blocked her from leaving the residence, and then pushed her down a staircase, causing injuries that required hospital treatment.
Officers found Morgenroth in the basement holding a metal object in what authorities described as a threatening manner. They used an electronic control device to subdue him and take him into custody. Both Morgenroth and the victim were transported to local hospitals.
This wasn’t a stranger-danger situation. Investigators determined that Morgenroth had an active order of protection filed against him, which he violated by showing up at the home in the first place.
The charges reflect the scope of what allegedly happened inside that Canterbury Lane house. Morgenroth faces burglary, robbery, assault, aggravated criminal contempt, unlawful imprisonment, criminal mischief, and criminal possession of a weapon, Long Island Press reported. Aggravated criminal contempt, which carries steeper penalties than a standard contempt charge under New York law, applies specifically when someone violates an order of protection and causes physical injury in the process. That charge alone signals prosecutors view this as more than a domestic disturbance.
Orders of protection are civil court instruments, but breaking one in the manner Morgenroth is accused of breaking this one can trigger a cascade of felony exposure that a simple assault charge wouldn’t. Nassau County courts have handled hundreds of such violations over the past several years, and law enforcement officials here have repeatedly said these cases don’t stay civil for long once a door gets kicked in.
Arraignment was pending medical clearance as of the most recent information available. Nassau County police did not release additional details about Morgenroth’s condition or the extent of the victim’s injuries beyond confirming both were treated at local hospitals.
East Hills, a village in Nassau County near the border with Oyster Bay town, is a residential community of roughly 7,000 people. Canterbury Lane sits inside a neighborhood of single-family homes where police calls of this nature aren’t common. Nassau County Police Department’s Second Precinct covers the area.
What the charges spell out, read together, is a picture of someone who allegedly came to a home where he wasn’t wanted, couldn’t be turned away, wouldn’t let the victim call for help, and turned physical when the confrontation reached its worst point. The staircase push is the detail that converts what might otherwise be a harassment case into a felony assault charge.
New York’s order of protection statutes allow courts to prohibit contact, bar someone from a residence, and require a minimum distance from the protected party. Violating those terms while committing a physical assault qualifies as aggravated criminal contempt under state law. It’s not a paperwork technicality. It means a judge had already identified this situation as dangerous enough to require a court order.
The Nassau County District Attorney’s office will handle prosecution once Morgenroth is arraigned. No attorney of record for Morgenroth had been publicly identified as of Monday, April 28.
Domestic violence cases on Long Island carry particular weight in Nassau County, where advocates have pushed for faster arraignment timelines and stricter bail conditions in order-of-protection violation cases. Whether Morgenroth will be held pending trial or released with conditions will be determined at arraignment, whenever his medical situation permits that to happen.
The victim, whose injuries were serious enough to require hospital evaluation, had done what domestic violence counselors recommend: she had a court order in place. That order did not stop what allegedly happened on Canterbury Lane on Saturday afternoon, and that’s the part of this case that won’t show up in any charge sheet.