A Marlboro man has been convicted of mayhem for nearly cutting a friend’s hand off with a machete over a disagreement over a soccer game last year.
A Middlesex Superior Court jury found Abel Hernandez, 41, guilty of threatening to commit a crime and mayhem after a four day trial. Judge Catherine Ham sentenced him to four to five years in state prison for the mayhem charge. He’ll also have to do three years of probation.
Hernandez had hosted a soccer game viewing party at his Broad Street house in Marlboro. At some point, he and at least one other man got into a heated argument over some aspect of the game, according to prosecutors, and so Hernandez grabbed a machete.
“I’m going to kill you,” Hernandez told the man as he swung the machete, striking the victim’s forearm, according to the Middlesex District Attorney’s office.
The unidentified victim suffered significant injury, with prosecutors saying that his arm was almost “completely severed.”
Hernandez fled his own home after the chaotic moment but police nabbed him at the intersection of Church and Hildredth streets in Marlboro later that night, according to a DA statement.
In his defense, Hernandez claimed that he wasn’t there that night but was drinking elsewhere and then went to a woman’s house, according to the DA statement. Prosecutors showed during trial that the restaurant he claimed to be drinking at did not serve alcohol and was not open on Sunday, the day Hernandez maimed the man.
