Martin Montes, Associate to Calvin Barry, Defends Daniel Jimenez-Acosta

Daniel Jimenez-Acosta on trial for second-degree murder in death of wife 

By Kelly Pedro, The London Free Press

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 9:10:30 EDT PM

 

Patricia Pacheco-Hernandez’s beautiful red curly hair soaked in the blood pooling around her body.

That’s what Serife Yusof remembers about going downstairs into Pacheco-Hernandez’s basement on May 18, 2011, and finding her lying on the basement floor in the laundry room.

She wasn’t alone. Pacheco-Hernandez’s husband of 14 years, Daniel Jimenez-Acosta, was sitting on top of her body, crying and rubbing her chest and calling her name, Yusof testified on the first day of Jimenez-Acosta’s second-degree murder trial.

“Patricia, Patricia,” Yusof recalled him crying.

Jimenez-Acosta’s trial began Wednesday when Assistant Crown attorney Fraser Ball laid out for the jury the case against the man.

Pacheco-Hernandez, 41, was a time zone and continent away from her family in Colombia, living in a townhouse in London — a city that was supposed to be a temporary home — when she reconnected with a childhood friend. The two would later have an affair after Pacheco-Hernandez confided to him that her marriage was reeling toward divorce, Ball said.

The family came to Canada as political refugees after fleeing Colombia.

On the surface, they were a typical couple with three children.

Bicycles were left on the driveway of the family home, a potty was on the bathroom floor, Dora toothpaste on the bathroom counter.

On the day she died, Pacheco-Hernandez helped her children get ready for school and day care and fed them breakfast. She would be dead before lunch, Ball said.

Her battered body was found in the laundry room in the basement of the family home, with Jimenez-Acosta sitting on top of her, rubbing his hands on her chest, his own chest shirtless and bloody.

Pacheco-Hernandez’s body was battered, Ball told the court, the tendons in her hand severed, some fingers nearly amputated and her scalp “criss-crossed with lacerations.”

Yusof testified her daughter left their home about 11:15 a.m. to pick up her son from school. She returned to find Jimenez-Acosta’s elderly father outside his son’s home yelling for police.

Her daughter told her of the commotion and Yusof went to the home, finding Daniel Jimenez-Acosta hysterical, shirtless and bloody and asked him where the children were. Jimenez-Acosta didn’t answer at first, Yusof testified, before telling her they were at school and running into the basement of the house.

She followed him and found him kneeling on the floor.

At first, Yusof testified, she didn’t see her friend.

But then, she saw her legs, her red curly hair and a pool of blood around her head and eyes.

“Right away I thought she was dead,” she testified.

Jimenez-Acosta was sitting on his dead wife’s chest, calling her name and rubbing her chest.

“He was crying. He was mad. He was trying to shake her,” she testified.

“I got scared and I yelled at him, ‘What did you do to her? Get away from her.’ Then I ran upstairs,” Yusof said in response to questions from Ball.

Upstairs she briefly spoke to a 911 operator when Jimenez-Acosta appeared slicing his chest and arms with thick glass, she said.

When a London police officer arrived on scene, Yusof showed him to the basement, where Jimenez-Acosta was again sitting on his dead wife’s body.

The officer could be heard on the 911 tape played for the court yelling at Jimenez-Acosta to get away from Pacheco-Hernandez.

Jimenez-Acosta, a slight man who is following the trial with the help of a Spanish translator, broke down in tears as his father’s voice could be heard on the 911 tape calling out his name.

Yusof said the officer told her to go upstairs. She said she did and ran home, where she started to cry.

Under cross examination, she agreed with defence lawyer Martin Montes that Jimenez-Acosta was a loving father and that Pacheco-Hernandez was happy and smiled when she talked about her husband, who had recently returned from Colombia a few days before her death. Yusof said she didn’t sense any problems between the couple.

The trial before Superior Court Justice Andrew Goodman continues Thursday.

kelly.pedro@sunmedia.ca

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