By Steve Plunkett
A Boca Raton man has been acquitted of trying to strangle and hold his girlfriend underwater at the 2022 Boca Bash.
Cole Goldberg, then 23, was charged with attempted second-degree murder, domestic battery by strangulation and simple battery in the April 24, 2022, incident as hundreds of boats gathered for the Lake Boca Raton party held each year on the last Sunday in April.
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge John Parnofiello found Goldberg not guilty of all three charges on March 12 after a three-day non-jury trial.
At the time of the arrest, witnesses said Goldberg and girlfriend Caroline Schwitzky, then 32, got into a heated argument before she jumped into the water to get away and he followed.
Goldberg, one witness said, “came up from behind her and grabbed her by the neck and pushed her underwater. He held her underwater and (another witness) pulled her away from him,” the arrest report said.
But inconsistencies in witnesses’ recollections at the trial troubled Parnofiello. One said Schwitzky was underwater 4 seconds, another said 10 to 15 seconds and a third “could not give a specific time,” the judge said. Two others could also not provide a time. A sixth witness said she was underwater “5, 6, maybe 10 seconds” and Schwitzky herself said she was submerged “30, 40 or 50 seconds,” Parnofiello said.
The witnesses also differed on whether Goldberg tried to hold Schwitzky underwater more than once, the judge said. And Schwitzky testified that “she was thrown around like a rag doll back and forth,” but there was no evidence of injuries consistent with such a violent manner, Parnofiello said.
Schwitzky had told the arresting officers that she and Goldberg had been dating for about a year. Schwitzky played a modeling agent in 2016 in the reality show 90-Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? on cable channel TLC.
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