After yet another court appearance Monday morning, the couple
accused of beating a pregnant woman learned a date for their trial
will likely be set June 1.
San Martin – After yet another court appearance Monday morning, the couple accused of beating a pregnant woman learned a date for their trial will likely be set June 1.
Charles Peralta, 30, and Nicole Agriesti, 23, are free on $100,000 bail charged with assault with a hate-crime enhancement.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Shapero told Agriesti and Peralta and their attorneys to return to court June 1 to set a trial date inside a courtroom at the South County Courthouse.
Agriesti’s attorney, Mark Arnold, was not present during the appearance. Another lawyer was representing the defendant for the day.
The alleged assault occurred on July 21, 2005, in the parking lot of the Cochrane Village Apartments, where alleged victim Xochitl Calderon was living at the time. According to Calderon and witnesses at the scene, she had left a bag of groceries on the pavement in the parking lot as she took other groceries inside her residence.
Calderon said Peralta and Agriesti ran over the bag of groceries in a vehicle Peralta was driving, and when Calderon began yelling at them, demanding money to pay for the food they had destroyed, Peralta threw a penny at her and used racial slurs.
Peralta said Calderon kicked the side of the vehicle as she was yelling and demanding money and that is when he and Agriesti got out of the vehicle. He said Calderon attacked Agriesti, and he was trying to separate the pair.
Calderon told police the couple began beating her, even though she told them she was pregnant. Doctors gave Calderon, who was in the early stages of the pregnancy, a grim diagnosis after the attack, but she did not lose her baby. The child was born premature, Calderon told the court during the preliminary hearing on the case in February 2006.
