Victim’s mother testifies in murder trial
Testifies in Hernandez trial
BRIDGEPORT — Lesbia Gonzalez-Pinto stood in the witness box, her right arm shooting straight out pointing directly at Oscar “Ziggy” Hernandez after she was asked to identify in court the man she believes fatally stabbed her daughter There he is,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion.
The Stamford woman was the ninth witness called by prosecutors Joseph Corradino and Emily Trudeau in the third day of Hernandez’s trial on charges of murder, attempted murder, first-degree assault and risk of injury to a child.
Hernandez, an undocumented resident from El Salvador, is accused of stabbing his girlfriend, 26-yearold Nidia “Yubi” Gonzalez, and her friend Brenda Castellanos, in his Greenwood Street home, then fleeing with his 6-year-old daughter Aylin in the early morning of Feb. 24, 2017. He was captured following a highspeed chase in central Pennsylvania.
Hernandez, who worked in a Stamford deli, was previously deported for assaulting another woman in Stamford. He re-entered the country illegally, police said.
Gonzalez-Pinto testified that she and her daughter came to Stamford from their native Guatemala 13 years ago. A year later, Nidia met Hernandez. She was 18, he was 26. He was married and had a child.
“I didn’t like him,” Gonzalez-Pinto said, as Hernandez sat grinning at her from across the courtroom.
Hernandez and Gonzalez moved into Gonzalez-Pinto’s Stamford home together and after a short time there, moved to Norwalk before finally moving into a basement apartment on Greenwood Street in Bridgeport owned by Hernandez’s boyhood neighbor in El Salvador.
Gonzalez-Pinto related that in January 2017, Gonzalez complained to her about Hernandez.
“She wanted to leave him,” she said. “Oscar is getting too jealous, he is always following me and I can’t stand him anymore,” Gonzalez-Pinto said her daughter told her.
Gonzalez-Pinto said at her daughter’s request, she agreed to talk to Hernandez. She said Hernandez told her that he and Gonzalez’s daughter told him Gonzalez was seeing another man.
“You would believe a girl over your wife?” GonzalezPinto said she asked Hernandez. “I said if you don’t love my daughter, you should get separated.”
But she said Hernandez replied: “How can you say that to me, mother-in-law, Yubi is the love of my life.”
The prosecutors were planning to play Castellanos’ video deposition to the jury — she is in her native Guatemala and refuses to return to this country — but defense lawyers Jonathan Demirjian and Kelly Billings have objected. Superior Court Judge Kevin Russo said he will decide whether to allow the video to be shown on Monday.