HIALEAH, Fla. – Police arrested a 54-year-old Hialeah man on four felonies Thursday after accusing him of abusing his octogenarian mother.
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Hialeah Police Department investigators documented two instances of abuse in an arrest report that they said were precipitated by the 87-year-old refusing to give her son, Eduardo Gonzalez-Estafani, money.
The report states that on New Year’s Day, Gonzalez-Estafani hit his mother in the head “several times” as she ate breakfast.
“The victim told (Gonzalez-Estafani) she was not going to argue with him, stood up and began collecting her breakfast so that she could eat in her bedroom,” the report states. “(Her son) then took ahold of the victim’s quad base walking stick, placed it to (her) throat and said, ‘Where are you going?’”
Police said Gonzalez-Estafani took away his mother’s walking stick but she was able to make it to her bedroom on her own, where she locked the door and remained until the next day.
She didn’t call police “due to prior incidents” involving her son, the report states. She told investigators that Gonzalez-Estafani “has taken her phone and broken it” in the past and said calling police “has caused her too many problems and (she) feared (her son) would do it again.”
Police said the next day, while driving her to a clinic, Gonzalez-Estafani again abused his mother after she told him she couldn’t give her any money.
They said he “backhand slapped her head, breaking her glasses,” struck her head and face several more times and grabbed her by the hair, pulling and shaking her head.
Authorities said she asked a clerk at the clinic to call police but officers never arrived. The report states she went home on the clinic bus and again locked herself in her room.
Gonzalez-Estafani went to HPD headquarters to give a statement but ultimately requested an attorney, police said, telling detectives “he has been arrested before and did not want to make things worse.”
Miami-Dade court records show that Gonzalez-Estafani has indeed been arrested before, including by Hialeah police in June 2020 on charges including battery on a person aged 65 or over.
Court records also show a December 2012 aggravated battery case. In each case, prosecutors eventually dropped charges.
On Thursday, police took him into custody on charges of aggravated battery on a person 65 or older, two counts of battery on a person 65 or older, abuse of an elderly or disabled adult and criminal mischief.
In court Friday, Miami-Dade Judge Victoria Sigler found no probable cause for the most serious charge — aggravated battery — after Gonzalez-Estafani’s attorney argued the alleged actions didn’t rise to the level necessary to charge him. A prosecutor agreed.
Sigler did, however, find probable cause on the remaining counts, ordering Gonzalez-Estafani held on a $12,650 bond.
He was jailed in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center as of early Friday afternoon.