In a striking moment, a woman testified in a Prince William County, Virginia, courtroom on behalf of her boyfriend who stabbed her and their young daughter and nearly killed them both.
Javier Molina blamed LSD for the rage that came over him the night of Oct. 18, 2019 inside the Woodbridge apartment he shared with his longtime girlfriend and their daughter.
He grabbed a knife and plunged it into his girlfriend’s stomach, then grabbed a second knife and headed for his 8-year-old daughter’s bedroom. He stabbed her too, carrying the child bleeding down the apartment building stairs where he continued to attack her outside on the ground.
In spite of her wounds, the girl’s mother was able to call 911. It took several of the responding officers to pull Molina off the little girl.
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At Molina’s sentencing hearing Thursday, his victims asked the judge to show mercy.
News4 is not identifying Molina’s girlfriend and daughter.
They both wrote letters to the judge, telling her they didn’t recognize the Javier Molina that attacked them that night.
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The girlfriend took the witness stand, telling prosecutors Molina had never been violent before and that he was an loving father.
“He always put her first,” she said. “She misses her father terribly.”
The woman says the last two years have been hard on her as a single parent.
She’s remained close to Molina’s family but says her own family disapproves of her continued relationship with her attacker.
“It was hard because I couldn’t speak to anybody because everybody looked at him as a monster,” she told the judge. “If he is allowed back in our life in the future, new boundaries would be set."
Both the woman and girl are left with lifelong scars, the child with marks on her arm, cheek and neck.
Molina’s girlfriend testified she and her daughter visit him in jail, but they never talk about the incident.
“I want to move past that,” she explained.
Molina’s defense attorney, Lisa Caruso, also asked the judge
to show leniency.
“There is no excuse for the actions my client took against the people he loved the most…he is going to have to earn that trust back,” Caruso said. “This family wants to be able to unify.”
But Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Teresa Polinske took a different view, urging the judge to sentence at the high end of the guidelines and warned there is no evidence Molina will change his behavior or be able to avoid drugs.
“Sometimes change happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes when change doesn’t happen the consequences can be dangerous, even fatal,” Polinske said.
Molina also addressed the judge, reading from a letter he’d written. He called his LSD use an irresponsible decision.
“I put my family in danger. I’m ashamed…I’m grateful for the love and mercy they show me,” he said. “I want to apologize for my actions. I want a chance to prove I can live drug free.”
Judge Angela Horan addressed the victim before sentencing, calling her a courageous mother for finding a way to get help to her daughter. But she rejected the plea for leniency, sentencing Molina to 18 years of jail time on the charges of aggravated malicious wounding and malicious wounding, with 32 years suspended and five years of probation once he’s released.
A tearful Molina left the courtroom to return to jail while his tearful girlfriend left the courtroom with the defendant’s father.
She declined a request to be interviewed. Her little girl will be 28 years old before Molina is out of prison.
