Jury convicts man of killing girlfriend
BRIDGEPORT — Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.
Oscar “Ziggy” Hernandez stood staring at jurors, his lip upturned in a snarl, as they found him guilty of fatally stabbing his girlfriend, seriously wounding her friend and fleeing with his 6-year-old daughter.
It took the jury of eight men and four women nearly two-and-a-half days to convict the 41-year-old former Stamford cook of murder, attempted murder, first-degree assault and risk of injury to a child.
He faces up to 100 years in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 4 by Superior Court Judge Kevin Russo.
“We are very happy with the verdict,” said a man, who identified himself as a relative of the dead woman, as he and other family members left state Superior Court in Bridgeport.
“It was a difficult case, but the jury worked conscientiously to reach the appropriate verdict,” Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph Corradino said later.
But it was clear from the moment they began deliberations on Thursday that the jury struggled to reach a verdict.
On two occasions the panel asked to hear the recorded testimony of a number of the state’s witnesses during the weekand-a-half trial, only to reconsider their request after being told by the judge the length of time it would take to hear all the recordings.
When the jury finally emerged from the deliberation room late Monday afternoon to announce its verdict, one juror was crying.
“We’re still processing,” said another juror, as he left the courthouse.
Hernandez was accused of stabbing his girlfriend, 26-year-old Nidia “Yubi” Gonzalez, and her friend, Brenda Castellano, at his Greenwood Street home in the early morning of Feb. 24, 2017, then fleeing with his 6-year-old daughter. He was captured following a high-speed chase in central Pennsylvania.
During his testimony on Wednesday, Hernandez claimed that his girlfriend — to whom he at times referred to as his wife — and her best friend stabbed each other following a drunken argument over a cell phone.
Though just a few feet away in a bedroom, Hernandez said he didn’t hear the women yelling at each other, but walked out into the grisly tableau after hearing a bottle break. He claimed he then slipped in the blood and fell on Castellano.
“I asked Yubi what has happened. She said, ‘this is my issue’ in a really soft voice,” Hernandez testified. “I took the knife away to see what I could do and I slipped on the blood, because I was wearing beach sandals.”
Gonzalez was stabbed six times in the left side of her neck, a blade plunging through her windpipe and carotid artery and causing her death, according to testimony during the trial. Castellano was stabbed multiple times in her front and back. She survived one blade thrust that went from one side of her body nearly through the other side.
Corradino and Assistant State’s Attorney Emily Trudeau claimed Hernandez killed his girlfriend after learning she was cheating on him and stabbed Castellanos when she tried to intercede.