Sheriffs list ex-boyfriend as a suspect
Gilroy – Quaking, the car veered wildly on Highway 85, as Antonieta George tugged helplessly at the steering wheel. She tried to turn; it wouldn’t turn. She tried to slow down; it trembled harder. Thumping like a horror-movie monster, the red Land Rover screamed across the highway at 65 miles per hour, a nightmare from which George couldn’t wake.
Somehow, George guided the shuddering vehicle onto the shoulder, and from there to Blossom Hill Road. As she slowed to a crawl, Sam Trujillo, a friend, happened to call her. George was uninjured, but sobbing and shaken.
Only minutes before on that Wednesday, Oct. 25, George was running errands at Wal-Mart and Nob Hill, and the car was running smoothly. She was en route to a doctor’s appointment when the axle suddenly broke, and George lost control.
After the accident, as Sam Trujillo raised the Land Rover Safari onto his flat-bed truck, he saw that the rod leading to the front axle was sawed through: a clean, malicious cut.
“Toni,” he said, “somebody’s trying to kill you.”
It looked that way to sheriffs, too. Deputy Rick Rutman took an incident report, citing the incident as felony vandalism and tampering with a vehicle. If evidence surfaces that the vandal wanted to cause George’s death, said Lt. Dale Unger, the district attorney could charge the case as attempted murder.
“If it looked like a mechanical thing, the deputy wouldn’t have taken a report,” said Unger. “We don’t take a report for someone’s brake pads being too low.”
One suspect has been named: Gilroy resident Petermax Trujillo, 33, George’s ex-boyfriend and Sam Trujillo’s nephew. When questioned by sheriffs, Petermax Trujillo claimed he hadn’t seen George since they broke up in January. Sheriffs beg to differ: in April, Trujillo was arrested for vandalizing George’s car. She said he smashed the windshield, after seeing her alongside a new boyfriend.
In June, George took out a restraining order against Trujillo, which she claims he violated twice: once on Sept. 3, and once on Oct. 21. On both dates, George phoned sheriffs, who arrived at her home to find Trujillo gone. Sheriffs wrote a report on the incidents and submitted it to the district attorney’s office, which declined to prosecute the case.
“Unfortunately, it’s her word against his,” Unger explained.
No evidence links Trujillo to the crime, which occurred between Tuesday, Oct. 3 and Tuesday, Oct. 24, when George was away from home. There are no witnesses, and the tool used to saw through the rod hasn’t been found. Detectives have questioned neighbors, but no one heard or saw someone damage the car.
“It’s the kind of crime where you don’t have a specific way of matching the evidence,” said Detective Sgt. Doug Stevens. “Shy of identifying a person in the area, or getting a witness statement, we’re limited in how far we can go with it.”
So far, said Stevens, sheriffs don’t have enough evidence to present the case to the DA’s office. But the case isn’t closed, he cautioned, and detectives are still investigating.
“It’s a very serious case,” Unger said, but “right now, there’s not enough evidence to make an arrest.”
Meanwhile, George waits anxiously: for an attack or for an arrest, she isn’t sure. In the past, she said, “He said he’d kill me.”
