Cops: Dad drove drunk with kids in car

A Massapequa man reportedly beating his two young sons in a public park was arrested a short time later and charged with driving while impaired with the children in his car, Nassau police said Thursday.

An officer dispatched to Marjorie Post Park in Massapequa after a 911 call reported the alleged beating Wednesday caught up with the man, Carlo M. Guercia, 35, of Delta Road, after he drove erratically out of the park with the 9-month-old and 3-year-old in the backseat, police said.

Guercia was ordered jailed Thursday on $20,000 bond or $10,000 cash bail on charges that include child endangerment, criminal possession of a controlled substance and Leandra's Law, the state statute that makes it a felony to drive drunk, high or both with a child as a passenger.

Judge Martin J. Massell issued a protective order barring any contact between Guercia and the children. He lives with his wife and the children, so he'll have to stay elsewhere unless the order is lifted.

A man accompanying Guercia's father to the arraignment Thursday who didn't give his name said of the defendant: "He's innocent. He never harmed his kids in his life."

The incident began Wednesday at about 1:30 p.m. when a 911 caller reported a man screaming at his children and putting his hands around one child's throat at the Massapequa park.

Witnesses said Guercia -- "covered in sweat" and "acting strange" -- was slapping his older boy across the face, shaking him, grabbing him by the throat and screaming for him to "shut up," according to court records.

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Those witnesses said Guercia appeared impaired, prosecutor Meghan L. Lavine said Thursday at the arraignment.

After being confronted by one of the witnesses, Guercia put the children in the back of his 2007 Mercedes-Benz and drove away.

Soon afterward a Nassau police officer from the Seaford-based Seventh Precinct, responding to the 911 call, saw the white Mercedes weaving in traffic.

He stopped the car and Guercia was "unsteady on his feet," had bloodshot eyes and was "sweating profusely all over his body," records show.

"I didn't do anything, officer," he told the officer, according to the records. "I swear, I did not touch them. I didn't hurt anyone."

Guercia failed a preliminary sobriety test and he was arrested, police said, because they suspected he was high on drugs. The children, who weren't hurt, were released to Guercia's family.

Inside Guercia's car, officers found two blue oxycodone pills in a peppermint tin, the records show.

With John Valenti