By Darling Gonzalez
RIVERSIDE, CA – During a Riverside County Superior Court preliminary hearing here Friday for Arturo Acosta—charged with inflicting corporal injury on his spouse and assault on a person causing great bodily injury—the victim said she was “terrified” after he allegedly choked her and pointed a gun at her.
Deputy District Attorney Vanessa Romero began her line of questioning by asking the victim about the events that transpired in the early morning of May 19, 2020.
The victim said the incident began as she went into the bedroom where she and Acosta shared a bed. She said she pretended to be asleep. When Acosta came in, he watched her sleep, and left a note next to her on the table side.
The victim said she was pretending to sleep after he had come in because “[h]e was not acting right and I just didn’t want to engage with him,” adding he seemed to be very angry, would call her foul names, and hadn’t let her sleep for two days.
The victim explained that for those two days he had taken time off of work so that they could talk and described that he had “[hounded her] for two days so [she] could confess to cheating on him.”
When asked about her fear toward Acosta, the victim said, “I was terrified of him.”
The victim explained that she remembered a clicking sound and the light was on in the room, and she saw Acosta holding a gun that he was “cocking.”
He had then walked to his side of the bed and put the gun on the side table, accused her of cheating, and they began to argue after he continued to call her foul names.
Out of frustration she threw her phone onto the bed and continued to argue.
She had gotten a glimpse of the gun on the side table and got scared because she thought, “What if he shoots me?” and realized she had no mode of communication because the phone was out of her reach.
At that point, the victim ran toward her phone to grab it.
Acosta, then, grabbed her by the arm, threw her on the bed, straddled her, and began to strangle her. She described that she could not get him off of her.
“I couldn’t breathe. Everything started going black. I started seeing stars and I thought I was going to die so I just thought of my kids at that moment,” the victim said.
The victim explained that she then remembered having breath again, so she jumped up, searched for her phone and called 911.
While the victim was calling 911, Acosta pushed by her and ran downstairs, the victim said.
As DDA Romero asked the victim if she heard him say anything while he strangled her, the victim said she did not hear him say anything, but, after a long pause, the victim added, “He looked like he wanted to kill me.”
During the cross-examination, Private Defense Attorney Robert Hickey also questioned the victim and the events of the incident.
In response to Hickey’s questions, the victim said she had a “regular relationship” with Acosta, but that it changed to being “not good” in October of 2019 when she had started going to school.
The victim explained she had “actually planned to move out because of the constant physical and mental abuse, and that the “constant” physical abuse began in December of 2019, noting “he would push me, he would slam me to the ground, he would yell at me, he would hit me,” she replied, adding he could call her “whore, cheater, slut.”
Attorney Hickey later asked the victim why she had not immediately sought medical attention right after the incident when officers had recommended she do so, and the victim said she did not want to leave her children in the house alone with Acosta or his mother.
Hickey ended his line of questioning by asking the victim how Acosta pushed her when he ran down the stairs, but the victim replied that she had not seen him push her because she was on the phone.
Judge Bernard Schwartz set the next court date for Jan 12.
