Boston board apologizes to New York grandmother, future son-in-law for attack at Brighton pizza joint

Agoros Bar and Grill on Chestnut Hill Avenue shut down in February, so there may be little the Boston Licensing Board can do to punish it for a fight last fall that left a 75-year-old grandmother on the floor, bleeding from her mouth and her daughter's boyfriend needing 12 stitches.

But on behalf of the city of Boston, board Chairwoman Christine Pulgini apologized to the visitors, who were in town to see the woman's granddaughter - who graduated yesterday from BC.

"We're horrified," by what happened Puligini told the woman, the man, and the woman's daughter at a hearing today. The woman accepted the apology and said she doesn't blame Boston, and in fact she praised D-14 Det. John Joyce for his investigation. "He couldn't have been more caring, more involved," she said.

The owners of Agoros declined to attend the hearing.

According to the family members, they were dancing on the bar's dance floor when three men in their 20s sort of began dancing along. When done, the family gathered for a photo and one of the guys photobombed them. The man asked them not to and that was the end of that - until the family was getting ready to leave at the end of the night, when one of the three men, now wearing a mustard-yellow leather jacket lunged at the man, knocking him to the ground. The grandmother said she tried to grab him to get him off the man, whieh "he grabbed both my sides and on the shoulder, and he flung me down." As she fell, she knocked over a metal stanchion that had been holding the pizza place's new license checker - installed in a vain attempt to curb underage drinkers - fell on her face, opening a gash.

The grandmother and man said a bar manager separated the fighters, then got mustard-yellow-jacket guy, who apologized to the man and out of the blue said he didn't have a knife. At a hearing in December, one of Agoros's bouncers claimed the man's ear was cut open by the edge of the license scanner, but today the man testified his surgeon told him the slices came from a knife.

The family spent five hours in the Beth Israel emergency room - after front-desk workers at the Brookline hotel they were staying at called Brookline Police. The family said nobody at Agoros ever called 911 for them and that while they did offer up a bag of ice and napkins for the bleeding, they insisted the family get out of there as quickly as possible.