Mugshot of Heriberto Perez. Photo Credit: THE VIRGIN ISLANDS POLICE DEPARTMENT.
ST. CROIX — A man who allegedly broke into his ex-girlfriend’s house while carrying a rifle as part of a string of harassing and threatening incidents is now facing multiple felony domestic violence charges.
According to court documents, a woman made contact with police on the morning of July 5, telling them that she had been awakened from sleep around 6 o’clock that morning by a loud banging on her bedroom’s glass door that leads to her back balcony.
Upon opening the curtain, she saw Heriberto Perez standing outside. Thinking that the screen door was locked, the woman opened the glass door to ask him what was going on. However, Perez grabbed the handle of the screen door, discovered it was unlocked, and brushed his way past her inside her residence. He had a long black rifle in his hands, she told police, but he was not pointing it at her or threatening her with it.
Perez reportedly asked for her cellphone and the password. After she refused to give it to him, he grabbed it from where it was charging on the bed, and took it into the living room. He was still holding the rifle when he came back into the bedroom and told her that she had three seconds to give him the password to the phone. If she did not, he reportedly told her that he would start slamming it on the ground. Perez reportedly threw the phone towards the wall, narrowly missing the woman’s sleeping child on the bed, according to the probable cause fact sheet. The woman told police that she pleaded with the home intruder to leave, telling him that she did not want him to go to jail if she called 911 to report the incident.
Perez reportedly ignored her, focusing his attention on slamming the phone to the ground again and again, cursing her as he did so. The woman said that he also threw her mirror down from the wall and stepped on it, scattering glass across the bedroom floor. The woman says she began to push Perez towards the living room, but he came back to the bedroom. She grabbed the phone, he grabbed it back, and then went into the living room and out of her apartment with the phone in his hand.
At that point, the woman said she retrieved a second cellphone from the couch in the living room and tried to call 911, but Perez came back inside and grabbed that phone too, leaving with it, before returning to the apartment to begin pacing back and forth, rifle in his hands.
The woman and the home invader reportedly engaged in a shoving match, with her trying to fend off his aggressive advances. Perez reportedly tried to put his hands around her neck, but she pushed him away with her hands on his face, giving her enough space to run away. She managed to grab one of her phones, and called 911, alerting him to who she was calling. At that point, he left through the glass door to her bedroom, reportedly taking her other phone with him.
The woman told police that Perez had been arrested in April for assaulting her. In that incident, Perez was charged with a misdemeanor – simple assault and battery – after he followed her as she fled to her grandmother’s house, boxed her into the driveway and began punching and slapping her in the face, and slamming her head into the steering wheel of her vehicle. He is reported to have taken her phone and broken it against the ground in that incident as well.
After his arrest in April, he was granted bail in the sum of $1000 by Magistrate Yolan Brow Ross, and allowed to post 10 percent plus $1 of that sum to secure his release into the care of a third-party custodian. He was restricted to a 6pm-6am curfew from Monday through Saturday and a 24-hour house arrest on Sundays, ordered to stay 500 feet away from the woman, and banned from the housing complex where she lives — conditions of release that were still in effect at the time of his reported July 5 assault.
According to court documents, the woman told officers that the July 5 incident stemmed from an altercation days earlier, when Perez told her that he wanted his television back, after an argument about her current boyfriend. Following a verbal dispute, the woman said she picked up the television but it slipped out of her hands due to the weight and fell onto the glass table where it had been sitting. Perez reportedly demanded the $800 cost of the television be paid to him by July 7, otherwise he would post “everything” about her on Facebook. The woman said she would reimburse him for the item if it was indeed broken. On that day, July 3, the woman said that Perez determined that neither he nor she would be leaving the residence that day, and that she would “see what will happen” to her new male friend if she called on him for assistance.
Perez reportedly left the apartment after a few hours on July 3, only to sit in her car across the street monitoring her movements. When she came outside she saw him, and he called her to once again reiterate his threat. “If you call anyone or leave the apartment, you will see what I would do to you and them,” he is alleged to have told her.
While police were investigating the woman’s claims, Perez reportedly called the woman several times, and also sent several messages via Facebook. He is alleged to have threatened to kill the woman’s current boyfriend if she took the matter to police, and once again threatened to post about her on social media. On July 5, Perez did make a post on Facebook, alleging that the woman gave him a sexually transmitted disease after being unfaithful. The woman contacted police again on July 20th, informing them that she had obtained a restraining order after he saw her again and threatened to set her car on fire.
On July 24, police found Perez at his workplace and brought him into the Wilbur H. Command Police Station for questioning. He told officers that he had been sleeping at the woman’s apartment for the last three weeks. He said that he woke up on the morning of July 5 and noticed a text message had come in to the woman’s phone, but that she denied his request to see it. He claims to have left the apartment after she threatened to call the police, and denied assaulting the woman or damaging any of her property. In fact, he told officers that she had assaulted him, slapping him on July 4 after he confronted her about another man. He admitted to making the disparaging post about the woman on Facebook, and also admitted to confiscating her second mobile phone, saying it was because he had bought it for her. Perez admitted to not having a firearm license, and disclosed a 2017 arrest for firearm possession.
Ultimately, Heriberto Perez was arrested and charged with first-degree burglary, aggravated assault and battery, destruction of property, forcible and unlawful entry, and false imprisonment — all as crimes of domestic violence. He was also charged with disturbance of the peace, possession of an unlicensed firearm during a crime of violence, first-degree robbery and third degree assault. He was remanded into custody until his July 26 advice of rights hearing.
In court on Wednesday, Magistrate Jessica Gallivan found probable cause to uphold all the charges against him, and ordered that Perez could be released to await this new trial after signing an unsecured bond for the $75,000 bail requirement together with his assigned 3rd-party custodian, or providing property worth double the amount of bail. His next court appearance for this arrest is scheduled for August 9, while his trial status conference for the alleged assault in April will take place on September 15.
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