Facebook friend shot pregnant woman in the knees, stole her XBox, Texas cops say
The pregnant woman told Austin police she recognized the man who brought a semi-automatic handgun to her apartment last week, and brandished it during what was supposed to be a simple exchange.
Her boyfriend let the man, and his two associates, in their southeast Austin apartment because they said on Facebook Marketplace they’d pay cash for his XBox gaming console, according to a probable cause affidavit for the arrest of 20-year-old John Joseph Almaguer, filed by Austin police.
Police say Almaguer shot the pregnant woman in both kneecaps, and the trio took her boyfriend’s XBox in the Facebook Marketplace exchange gone wrong on the night of Nov. 20. APD has issued a warrant for Almaguer’s arrest, but have not arrested him yet, according to jail records.
Neither the woman, nor her boyfriend, have been identified by authorities.
The woman told police that her boyfriend asked her to bring the XBox down from another level of the apartment, just after the three men arrived, on Nov. 20, at about 9:40 p.m., according to the affidavit. As she made her way down to them, she saw the man she recognized holding onto the black handgun.
She “recognized one of the males immediately as being John Almaguer,” the affidavit reads. “John Almaguer is someone she has known since middle school, and whom she has stayed in contact with on Facebook.”
Almaguer held the gun to her throat and threatened to shoot her, the Austin American Statesman reported, and she pleaded with him not to, because she is pregnant.
After one of the men punched her boyfriend in the face, the men took the XBox, the woman told police. Their neighbor Kasandra Marroquin, who lives in the same apartment complex, heard five gunshots as the men left, she told KEYE.
She found the victim laying in a pool of blood in the entryway of her apartment, she told the station.
“That was just mind blowing to see all that, to be in that situation hearing the gun shots so close,” Marroquin told the station. “The poor girl, she’s on the floor blood everywhere, her boyfriend is freaking out.”
The woman was taken to a local hospital, the affidavit says.
Almaguer faces a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison, and a fine of up to $10,000, according to court records.
