A California man will spend four years in prison after severely beating and injuring his wife — an attack his 9-year-old son caught on video, despite his father denying the crime.
Miguel Lazaro-Castillo was sentenced Friday to the maximum term for the charges against him, which include felony domestic violence, false imprisonment and misdemeanor child abuse, according to the Yuba County District Attorney's Office.
The charges, which Lazaro-Castillo pleaded no contest to in October, stem from an incident that occurred shortly before 2 a.m. on Oct. 9, when one of the 38-year-old man's children called 911.
Deputies with the Yuba County Sheriff's Department arrived at the residence six minutes later to find Lazaro-Castillo sitting on top of his wife, who was lying face-down on the floor surrounded by bloody napkins, the district attorney's office said. The couple's three children — ages 15, 14 and 9 — were also at the scene.
Lazaro-Castillo, who has no prior criminal record, initially claimed "he had no idea" where the blood at the scene had come from, also denying he had struck his wife, the district attorney's office said.
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The mother, 34-year-old Kelsey Carpenter, had been facing a life sentence in a case that sparked national outrage.
However, deputies later discovered the man's youngest child, the 9-year-old, had videotaped the altercation between his parents.
The over-six-minute video showed Lazaro-Castillo repeatedly hitting his wife in the head and the face, authorities said. It also shows one of their other children trying to shield her mother from the blows, but Lazaro-Castillo slapped the child on the leg and continued his assault on the woman, the district attorney's office said. In the end, deputies said the man is shown turning his wife onto her stomach, where he forced her face down into the carpet for an extended amount of time.
Both Lazaro-Castillo and his wife, along with one of the minor children, were intoxicated at the time of the assault.
The children have now been placed into protective custody.
