Mugshots of Ramon Caraballo De Garcia and Santa De La Rosa. Photo Credit: THE VIRGIN ISLANDS POLICE DEPARTMENT
ST. THOMAS — A husband and wife were both arrested and charged with assault following reports of a marital fight.
Early during the morning of Tuesday March 7, a woman met police who had been dispatched to a residence in Chocolate Hole, and told them that her friend and her husband were fighting.
Officers met with both husband and wife, and noted the couple’s visible injuries. According to court documents, 46-year-old Santa De La Rosa’s face was cut and scraped, while Ramon Caraballo De Garcia, age 47 had a laceration on his right ear, according to the police statement.
Both were taken to the Myrah Keating Smith Clinic for treatment, where a doctor translated their recounting of events from Spanish to English for the benefit of the officers.
On Monday night, around 10:00 p.m. De La Rosa said she left work and went to a bar to celebrate a co-worker’s birthday. She met her husband there, but he left around 11:30 p.m. Around midnight, she told police she went home and found the residence empty. De Garcia reportedly came in a short while later, upset that she had been out until such a late hour.
First her husband cursed at her, De La Rosa said, and then he punched her in the face. She fought back and tried to call 911 on her cell phone, but De Garcia reportedly grabbed the phone away from her, first tossing it onto the floor before ultimately throwing it “over the porch into the bushes,” according to documents presented to court.
The friend who had initially spoken to police said that while she did not personally see what caused the fight to break out, she felt she had to step in because she noticed De La Rsa was wielding a machete during the fight.
The doctor found that apart from the cut on his ear, the husband had been bitten. He also had lacerations on his right arm and knee, and on the back of his left hand. De Garcia also had a bruise on the left side of his face.
Police found that the couple had been married six years, and that De La Rosa had never reported previous allegations of similar assault by her husband.
Both were arrested — the wife charged with third-degree assault as a crime of domestic violence and possession of a dangerous weapon, and the husband with simple assault and battery as a crime of domestic violence, and malicious interference with emergency communication.
Because of the territory's laws surrounding bail for such acts, De La Rosa and De Garcia were remanded into custody at the Bureau of Corrections until their first court hearing, scheduled for Wednesday.
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