By Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Special to the SUN

A Hernandez man received a conditional discharge following four-and-a-half years of supervised probation, after pleading guilty to charges of aggravated assault against a household member and child abuse, for beating his girlfriend while she was with her infant child.

District Judge Anastasia Martin issued the conditional discharge for Izrael Hernandez, 22, on Jan. 26, the same day he pleaded guilty, and filed the order on Feb. 18.

Prosecutors initially sought to have Hernandez held without bail following his initial arrest, but the judge ordered him to be released. Rio Arriba Sheriff’s Deputy Patrick Martinez filed the warrant for his arrest on July 21, but Hernandez was not arrested on the warrant until Sept. 18.

Martin sentenced Hernandez to four-and-a-half years of probation. After three years, if there are no violations, he will be released from probation, and the charges will be dismissed.

Martinez wrote in the affidavit for an arrest warrant that the victim’s grandmother called police and he responded to the house on Birch Lane in Española. When he got there, the victim, a woman, was lying on the couch, holding an ice pack to her left thigh and had bruises and bumps on her face.

The victim told Martinez they had a fight the night before and in the morning, Hernandez asked, “So you don’t want to be with me?” repeatedly, then hit her repeatedly as she tried to throw away her child’s dirty diaper.

“Then he asked me again if I wanted to be with him, I told him no. And then he kneed me in the leg,” Martinez wrote, quoting from the victim’s statement.

Hernandez hit her again in front of her mother and her mother told him to get out. He walked to the kitchen, asked the question again, and when she said she didn’t want to be with him, he said, “I’ll kill all of you,” Martinez wrote.

After the woman’s mother tried to call the police, Hernandez pulled out a gun, cocked it and told them to sit down, however, one of them was able to escape and call another family member.

Martinez wrote that the victim was limping because of the beating and her face was temporarily disfigured and that the victim’s mother told him that she is worried his violent behavior is going to escalate, ending in her daughter’s death.

Hernandez was charged with battery against a household member and interference with communications, both misdemeanors, in 2022, per documents attached to the motion for pre-trial detention. That case was dismissed after the reporting officer, Martin Vigil, failed to attend a pre-trial interview with the defense and his testimony was suppressed, and the victim, the same one as in the new case, was not cooperating, according to the dismissal notice.