Med student fights expulsion over attempted-murder charge

Charged with attempted murder for allegedly tossing his girlfriend off a balcony last month, Brett Picciotti claims that he's been unfairly tossed out of a New Jersey medical school as a result.

Authorities said that Picciotti, 26, of Berlin Borough, Camden County, grabbed the 26-year-old woman by the throat and threw her off a second-floor balcony March 21 during a domestic incident at a friend's apartment in Evesham, Burlington County.

The woman landed on the ground and was assisted by two pedestrians, who called 9-1-1. She was taken to Cooper University Hospital, in Camden, where she was hospitalized with unspecified injuries, treated, then released, police said.

Picciotti, a fourth-year student at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), was arrested later that night at a family member's home in Brigantine, Atlantic County.

The case is awaiting presentation to a grand jury.

Three days after the incident - according to a complaint filed Monday in Camden - Picciotti was called into the office of Dr. Paul Krueger, associate dean of academic affairs at UMDNJ, and told to "absent himself" from the Stratford, Camden County, campus and return any identification cards "for no other reason other than the criminal charge pending against him."

Attorney Frances Hartman said that the university's policy requires a written notice, a hearing and a chance for the accused to present witnesses before being kicked out.

"They have denied him his due process," she said.

Hartman said that the university is claiming that Picciotti took a voluntary leave of absence less than two months before he was set to graduate.

Picciotti passed a private polygraph test regarding the March 21 incident and has all the makings of a top doctor, Hartman said.

"He's an exemplary young man," she said. "You'd be proud to call him your son.

"This is an aberrational charge. I think there's an explanation. I'm just not prepared to give it to you right now."