Prosecutors dropped charges against a Coyote father and his girlfriend, who allegedly attacked his daughter and threatened to kill her.
Rio Arriba County Deputy Nicholas Diaz initially applied for an arrest warrant for Elisa Trujillo, 48, and her boyfriend, Manuel Salazar, 56, for the alleged attack on June 23, noting that he was never able to get in contact with Trujillo or Salazar.
Diaz filed charges against Trujillo for one count of aggravated battery and two counts of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He filed charges against Salazar for two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a fourth-degree felony; and two counts of negligent use of a deadly weapon, a petty misdemeanor.
Rio Arriba Magistrate Judge Alexandra Naranjo released both on their own recognizance on July 1, after they were arrested on the warrants on June 30. She ordered Salazar to report to pre-trial services for the highest level of pre-trial supervision, but she levied no such restriction on Trujillo.
Prosecutor Mara Christine dismissed both cases without prejudice on Aug. 20, meaning they can be brought again. In the form dismissal for Salazar, it states that it is dismissed “pending further investigation,” while Trujillo’s is on a different form where Christine filled in the bubbles for the reasons of the dismissal as a state’s witness failing to appear and further investigation is needed.
The Attack
Diaz wrote in the affidavit for an arrest warrant that he was sent to the Española Presbyterian Hospital on June 21 for a patient with injuries wanting to file a report. He met with Manuel Salazar’s daughter and her boyfriend.
She pointed to her knees and said she was beat up by her stepmother. He noted her knees were bandaged and she showed him a large bruise on her right hip. She told him she hit her head when Trujillo allegedly attacked her, losing consciousness, she had neck pain and could barely walk. The neck pain and inability to walk sent her to the hospital, two days after the attack. Medical records Diaz reviewed indicated she suffered a concussion and she was given crutches to help her walk.
She told Diaz that on June 19, she was unloading groceries at her dad’s house in Coyote, where she was living, when Trujillo came in the house, screaming and yelling at her, then grabbed her by the back of the neck, pulled her hair back and threw her against a refrigerator. She lost consciousness and woke up four feet away from where she had been standing, Diaz wrote.
“(Daughter) told me her initial reaction after waking up was to ‘go after her’ because Eliza assaulted her,” Diaz wrote. The attack happened in front of (daughter’s) 8-year-old daughter.
The boyfriend told Diaz they didn’t originally report it because they didn’t realize how hurt she was and she didn’t want to press charges against her dad.
“After thinking about it more, (daughter) told me she wanted to press charges against them both ‘because who does that to their daughter,’” Diaz wrote.
The boyfriend told Diaz that the following day, they went back to the house to get some belongings. Both Trujillo and Salazar were “outside being belligerent, drunk and screaming” at them, he wrote.
Trujillo went in the house, retrieved a lever-action rifle and argued about shooting the daughter and her boyfriend. The boyfriend put his hands up and told them not to shoot and he was just there for the rest of his belongings and he wanted no trouble, Diaz wrote.
“(Daughter) told me she overheard Eliza telling Manuel that (daughter) was a ‘slut, a whore, and disrespectful’ and shouting ‘Shoot her! Shoot her! Just kill them!’” Diaz wrote. “All of the animosity from Elisa was allegedly due to (daughter) writing ‘(EXPLETIVE) YOU LISA’ on the wall of the room they were staying in inside of Manuel’s house.”
The boyfriend told Diaz he watched Trujillo load the rifle, give it to Salazar and was “begging Manuel to shoot (daughter) and (boyfriend),” he wrote.
Salazar allegedly told them to get the rest of their stuff and get off his property while Trujillo was yelling, “Just (expletive) kill them, Manuel! She’s nothing but a scabra! She has no respect!”
Scabra is Spanish for “filthy whore,” Diaz wrote.
Salazar then fired into the air and the younger couple left the property, fearing for their safety, he wrote.
The alleged attack by Trujillo left the couple homeless, as they used the last of their money to buy a tent to sleep in, and her daughter is living with her sister, he wrote.
Diaz wrote that Salazar and Trujillo have violent criminal histories and “are escalating in their violent acts.”
Past Cases
In January 2022, Salazar was charged with aggravated battery against a household member with a deadly weapon and the case was dismissed, but the case files are missing from the online courts portal.
In October 2022, Salazar was charged with aggravated battery against a household member with a deadly weapon. The case was dismissed “pending further investigation” and never refiled. In that case, Salazar allegedly hit Trujillo in the head with a rock after she caught him having an affair with a woman she knows as “Roach” and when she confronted him, he grabbed a flagstone, about a foot long, and hit her in the back of the head, Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Deputy Ernesto Giron wrote in an affidavit for an arrest warrant at the time.
In 2018, Trujillo was charged with aggravated assault against a household member and criminal damage to property of a household member after she allegedly threatened her boyfriend at the time with a steak knife and took a chair to break a window and destroyed glass and pottery in the kitchen.
That case was dismissed without prejudice “pending further investigation” and no charges were refiled.