State Trooper Accused of Choking Girlfriend Released on Bail

His attorneys called the alleged victim a 'woman scorned.'

Image via Massachusetts State Police

Image via Massachusetts State Police

A veteran state trooper accused of drunkenly choking his girlfriend inside their Boxboro apartment has been released on bail.

Robert A. Sundberg III was arrested Saturday on charges of strangulation and assault on a family member. At a three-hour hearing Wednesday, Ayer District Court Judge Cesar Archilla determined that Sundberg is a danger to the woman, who prosecutors say he’s dated for the last six years, the Lowell Sun reports.

Sundberg, 45, was freed on $10,000 bail and ordered to wear a GPS tracking device and stay away from the State Police Barracks in Concord, where the woman works.

The woman, who was not named, told police that the incident was the culmination of a pattern of aggression, which began with verbal abuse and progressed to hair-pulling and physical violence, she says.

The woman says she awoke around 1:15 a.m. Saturday to a “highly intoxicated” Sundberg choking her, talking about another man texting her. She managed to lock herself in the apartment, only to be pulled out by her hair and choked several more times before Sundberg passed out, she alleges.

While State Police Lt. Brian Moran testified Wednesday that he found red marks on the woman’s neck and bruises on her arms, Sundberg’s defense attorneys said he couldn’t see any red marks in photos, and called the victim “a woman scorned,” the Sun reports.