ESCONDIDO — After attacking a 14-year-old girl with a knife, Jovana Gudino, also 14, went shopping with her mother, while the victim was life-flighted to an area hospital, a prosecutor said Dec. 2 at the teenager’s arraignment hearing.
The new details surrounding the afternoon knife attack came out as part of Deputy District Attorney Kristie Nikoletich’s bail request, in which she asked Gudino be held on $500,000 bail.
Gudino is charged with attempted murder, torture, assault with force likely to product great bodily injury, residential burglary and dissuading a witness relating to the May 3 attack on the teenager in her Escondido home on Goldenrod Street.
The torture charge alone carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Two allegations, causing great bodily injury and personal use of a knife, are attached to all the charges, except for the charge of dissuading a witness.
In November, a Superior Court Judge ruled Gudino was unfit for Juvenile Court, which paved the way for the district attorney’s office to file the charges in adult court. If Gudino had been convicted of the aforementioned charges in Juvenile Court, she would have been held in custody until she was 25.
Two other 14-year-old suspects, a girl and boy, were also arrested in connection with the crime. While they face the same charges as Gudino, their cases are currently being handled in Juvenile Court.
As Nikoletich detailed Gudino’s alleged actions, the teenage girl — clad in an orange juvenile hall jumpsuit — sat nonchalantly in the courtroom.
Nikoletich said Gudino “engaged in a premeditated attack in which she beat, tortured and stabbed” the victim. The prosecutor said the defendant and another suspect rushed and punched the victim when she opened her backdoor to let her dog inside.
“The force of those blows pushed her through the living room and into her bedroom,” Nikoletich said.
Inside the victim’s bedroom, she was forced to her knees and Gudino pulled out a knife, which was then dragged along her thigh; the girl’s back was also carved with the knife, the prosecutor said.
During the attack, the teenage girl was stabbed five times, Nikoletich said. Then, she was dragged into the bathroom, pushed into the shower where she wash told to wash off all the evidence, and threatened not to “snitch.”
Immediately following the attack, the victim called 911 and was life-flighted to Rady’s Children’s Hospital, where doctors said the injuries could have been fatal if not for the immediacy of the surgery, Nikoletich said.
After hearing the details of the case, Superior Court Judge Marshall Hockett set Gudino’s bail at $2 million.
Following the hearing, Gudino’s family and friends declined a request to comment on the case.
Gudino’s next scheduled court appearance is Jan .15. A preliminary hearing was set for Feb. 3.
next post
