A 21-year-old man who supplied alcohol to three girls at a Pittsfield park, then dragged one into the woods when she tried to fight him off, was sentenced to just five years in a House of Correction — two to four years short of what prosecutors asked for. Another predator who targeted children in a public space gets a break, and another community is left wondering whose safety the courts actually prioritize.

Chase Wood met the girls at a Pittsfield park in the summer of 2025 and gave them alcohol, according to the Berkshire County District Attorney's Office. After they drank it, he gave them a ride on his electric bike and began trying to assault them. Two of the girls fought him off; a third could not because of her position on the bike. Wood then took that girl to a secluded area of the park. When she resisted, he dragged her into the woods. Eventually, all three escaped.

A jury convicted Wood on a stack of charges: three counts of indecent assault and battery, one count of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, one count of assault and battery, one count of assault with intent to rape, and three counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor. Prosecutors asked for seven to nine years. The judge gave him five, plus three years of probation.

District Attorney Tim Shugrue praised the outcome. "I am pleased by the outcome in this case," he said, commending the victims' bravery and the work of Child Abuse Unit Chief Andrew Giarolo. "The trauma he inflicted on three young women will impact them for years to come."

Pleased? The man dragged a child into the woods and the court couldn't hand down even the minimum of what prosecutors sought. Shugrue's statement reads like a man who knows the system doesn't give him much to work with and has decided to call it a win anyway.

The sentence fits a familiar pattern. Courts routinely hand down lighter penalties for crimes against children than the public expects, and prosecutors routinely celebrate whatever they can get. The girls who escaped Wood's attack will carry that trauma for decades. Wood could be out before he's 30.

Meanwhile, public parks remain unsafe for the families who depend on them. In San Juan Capistrano, California, a father of three was stabbed to death October 7 while walking back from a store with drinks and snacks for his children waiting at a park. Valentin Onofre Martinez, 31, was attacked around 8:10 p.m. near Calle Santa Barbara and Los Rios Street, according to the New York Post. First responders rushed him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No arrests have been made. The Orange County Sheriff's Office assigned its Homicide and Gang Enforcement Team to the case.

Martinez's fiancée, Mia, had to tell their children — ages 3, 5, and 7 — that their father was not coming back. "They just keep asking for their dad. When is daddy coming back? And I just have to keep telling them that he's not coming back," she told ABC 7. She said the stabbing was not gang-related and that her fiancé, who worked nights at Home Depot and still took his kids to school every morning, was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Two parks, two coasts, two failures. In Massachusetts, a predator who hunted children at a park gets a sentence the system calls justice but that no parent would call adequate. In California, a father fetching snacks for his kids at a park is dead and no one has been held accountable. The institutions tasked with protecting ordinary people keep delivering outcomes that leave the vulnerable exactly where they started — on their own.