17 year NHL vet Darren McCarty is usually the sort of guy you wouldn’t want to encounter in a dark alley, but it seems there’s some characters the former Red Wings F would prefer to not see in any lighting whatsoever. The Detroit News’ Mike Martindale reports McCarty and wife Sheryl have obtained a court order of protection against “three Oakland County women and a Macomb County man for stalking and harassment”, with the quartet charged with trying to lure the McCartys, “back into a partying lifestyle.”
The McCartys accuse the four of trying to get the couple fired from their jobs, threatening both through text messages and phone calls, posting malicious comments on McCarty’s work and appearance websites, and threatening violence against them.
Oakland Circuit Judge Mary Ellen Brennan granted the protection orders on May 22 against Tonya Juhl, 37, and Kimberley Mitchell, 38, both of Clawson; Anne Marie Samulski, 22, of Royal Oak; and Louis Barbato, 40, of Shelby Township.
The orders, good for a year, bar Juhl, Mitchell, Samulski and Barbato from approaching, following or contacting the McCartys or going to their home or workplaces. McCarty works for the Detroit Red Wings Alumni Association, and worked in the past year for a Detroit pawn shop; his wife is a nurse at Beaumont Hospital.
“All we want is to be left alone,” McCarty said in an interview. “I ignored some of the things they were doing and was willing to let it go, until they started threatening my wife and me. Death threats.
“They don’t like me because I’m not running around with them anymore, and they don’t like her because we got married and just want to get on with our lives.”
Sheryl McCarty described the four as “delusional, obsessed hockey fans.”