Edgewood man indicted on battery charge, other counts

26-year-old, acquitted of murder in 2018, is accused of choking girlfriend, pointing gun at her and a neighbor

A Santa Fe County grand jury has indicted an Edgewood man, acquitted in 2018 of two counts of murder, on new charges accusing him of choking his girlfriend and then pointing a loaded gun at her and a neighbor who had attempted to intervene.

Anthony Kapinski, 26, faces a count of aggravated battery and other charges. He was arrested July 21 after Edgewood police responded to a 911 call from the couple’s neighbor. The woman told officers she was outside in her yard when she heard screaming and looked across the street to see Kapinski strangling his girlfriend and dragging her backward across the yard with his arm around her neck, according to a report from the Edgewood Police Department.

The neighbor said she ran over and told Kapinski to let the girlfriend go. He pulled a firearm from his backpack, pointed it at her and said, “I’ll shoot you,” according to the report. He then pointed the gun at his girlfriend, the report said.

By the time officers arrived, Kapinski had left the home and was parked a short distance away.

He admitted to police he had put his hands around his girlfriend’s throat and had pushed her backward,

the report said, but he refused to give officers his firearm.

Police later found the

.38 Special revolver — described by the neighbor as the gun Kapinski had pointed at her — and a Glock .45-caliber handgun in the vehicle of a friend who had visited the couple’s home that day.

The .38 Special had been reported stolen in Albuquerque, according to the report.

State prosecutors argued at a July 23 hearing that Kapinski should be kept in jail until his trial in the case. They highlighted his “lengthy criminal history, including multiple instances of violence.”

But state District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer released him on electronic monitoring, court records show. He’s scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Aug. 22.

Following a trial in 2018, court records show, a jury found Kapinski not guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in the 2017 shooting deaths of Jordan Mucher and Paul Francia. Kapinski had admitted to shooting the two men in the parking lot of an Albuquerque church, according media reports from the time, but claimed he’d done so in self-defense after the men attacked him.

Kapinski’s attorney, M. David Chacon II, declined to elaborate Friday on the new charges, saying it was too soon to do so, but said, “We believe there is more to this story than has been initially indicated.”