BREVARD COUNTY, Fla.,None — A Pop Warner football coach was dismissed from his Brevard County team. The league found a list of felony convictions on Stanley Domino's criminal record. At least one of those convictions was aggravated child abuse.
The kids practice and play at Astronaut High School. When they have their next match-up, one of their adult volunteers won't be on the field.
On the clerk of the court's website there is a lengthy list of arrests for Domino, including a number of convictions. When the Mighty Mites took the field this season, half the team was recruited by him, but the volunteer communications coordinator and part-time coach was dismissed after the East Coast Pop Warner Conference learned about his lengthy criminal record.
A police report from 1993 says Domino hit his girlfriend's 2-and-a-half-year-old child with a belt and threw him on a bed so hard the bed broke.
Domino said he couldn't meet for an on-camera interview with WFTV, but said he never had a chance to properly defend himself in court and pleaded no contest. His record includes aggravated assault and aggravated stalking.
Domino was also convicted of escape and battery on a law enforcement officer. He says that was because he wasn't thinking during his trial on the child abuse case and ran from the courtroom.
The 42-year-old Titusville man said he was up front about his record and even provided his own background check to the North Brevard Hawks when he started working with them a month ago.
The head of the East Coast Pop Warner Conference told WFTV by phone it recognizes the work Domino was doing for the league and believes Domino's past is in his past, but was forced to live by rules set by the national organization forbidding convicts from having positions.
Domino told WFTV he's not giving up; he said he's going to try to get an audience with national leaders of the Pop Warner organization to show them he's a changed man.
WFTV
