McAllen police arrested a 39-year-old Alamo man last Friday who is accused of entering his ex-girlfriend’s house with a machete and handgun and threatened to kill the woman and himself.
The woman escaped when Ricardo Adriel Torres became distracted by talking to himself and asked a neighbor to call police, a probable cause affidavit stated.
Police arrested Torres in the 2100 block of Cortez Avenue and charged him with failure to identify, burglary of a habitation to commit other felony and unlawful restraint. He was also charged with assault causing bodily injury for another alleged attack on the woman on May 30 after police say the duo was selling crack cocaine and Torres became angry at how she was “serving the drugs” to people.
Torres is also charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after detectives linked him to a July 9 machete attack on a man.
He remains jailed on a total of $330,000 in bonds, jail records show.
After McAllen police found the woman, who had hidden behind a bush, and arrested Torres on the spot for providing a false name and because of the July 9 warrant, she told officers a harrowing story about how she thought she was going to die, according to probable cause affidavits.
While police arrived on scene at about 3 p.m., the woman said Torres first entered her residence just after 2 p.m.
She had been taking care of her boyfriend’s house because he was in jail when Torres let himself in without permission through the front door, which didn’t lock due to old damage to the door frame, the charging document stated.
“(She) stated she observed Ricardo was carrying a black 9MM handgun in one hand and a silver machete in the other hand,” the probable cause affidavit stated.
When she asked what he was doing, Torres “told her he was there to kill her and himself,” according to investigators.
The woman told Torres to leave, but he began to yell and swung the machete at her, missing and hitting the wall, the probable cause affidavit stated.
She ran out of the house and Torres chased her, tackled her and dragged her back inside, according to the charging document.
“(She) stated Ricardo then stood over her and pointed his black handgun at her forehead. (She) stated Ricardo told her he was going to kill both of them,” the probable cause affidavit stated.
The woman told police she believed him and that he moved the handgun to her ribcage and poked her with the barrel several times, investigators say.
“(She) stated she screamed at Ricardo to leave her alone,” the charging document stated. “(She) stated Ricardo stepped away from her and told her to stop exaggerating.”
According to the woman, she stood up, walked away and began talking to Torres in a friendly voice to keep him call as he was still armed with the gun and machete, the probable cause affidavit stated.
“(She) stated Ricardo appeared to calm down and became distracted by talking to himself,” investigators said in the affidavit.
When she saw that, she told Torres “I’m leaving now” and did not wait to see if he heard, according to the charging document.
She ran out of the house and Torres chased after her, yelling for her not to leave, according to police.
She hid in a bush for 15 minutes until Torres stopped walking around the street yelling and asking her where she was, the probable cause affidavit stated.
Police report recovering the machete on the woman’s bed, but say the handgun was not recovered at the scene.
After that arrest, investigators asked Torres about the July 9 aggravated assault with a deadly weapon warrant.
Torres, who police say waived his Miranda rights, placed himself at the scene and said he had swung the machete during a physical altercation with a man who had a pipe.
That slightly differed from the story the man told police from the hospital on July 9.
He told police that he was inside a residence in McAllen at 12:15 a.m. when three men armed with machetes approached the front door, a probable cause affidavit stated.
The man knew of those men as “Ricky” and told investigators he grabbed a machete to defend himself, ran outside but began to get assaulted by the men, the charging document stated.
He told police “Ricky,” who was later identified as Torres, hit him on the head with a machete.
The man suffered a 7-inch laceration to his head, as well as lacerations to his elbow, upper left torso, back and cuts to his fingers, according to the charging document.
Police also say Torres told them that the men went to that location to buy drugs.
