As Liliana Ruiz was being stabbed nine times by the father of her children, their 11-year-old son tried to halt the attack, a Fayette County sheriff’s detective testified in court this week.
Jesus Ojeda Jimenez, accused of murdering Ruiz in the Jan. 20 attack in front of her home in the Landmark Mobile Home Park, heard Detective Wendy Moulder recall that the boy pulled the knife from his mother and wrapped her in his t-shirt to try and save her.
Jimenez, meanwhile, fled the scene, leaving behind a note written in Spanish that asked for forgiveness and asked the first person responding to the scene at 350 Greenview Circle to take care of the three boys, Moulder said. Moulder testified that Jimenez told sheriff’s detectives that he wrote the note prior to the fatal attack on Ruiz.
After Moulder’s testimony concluded, Fayette County Magistrate Bob Ruppenthal ruled there was sufficient evidence for Jimenez to be bound over for trial.
The attack began after Jimenez became agitated about how long Ruiz was away from the home while she was getting dinner, Moulder said. When she returned in her car, Jimenez met her outside.
In a statement to sheriff’s detectives, Jimenez said that he asked her “if she enjoyed her dinner with another man, and she replied yes, and that’s when he stabbed her in the chest,” Moulder said.
Moulder said a neighbor witnessed the attack and also tried to intervene on Ruiz’s behalf, and she ultimately collapsed in a grassy area a short distance from her home.
The two youngest children ran to the neighbor’s trailer screaming, asking for someone to call 911, saying their dad was stabbing their mom, Moulder said.
The first sheriff’s deputy to arrive used a clotting treatment to try and stop the bleeding prior to the arrival of the first paramedics, Moulder said. Ruiz was transported to Piedmont Fayette Hospital and was pronounced dead.
An autopsy performed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab determined that Ruiz died from the nine stab wounds she received during the attack, Moulder said.
Although Jimenez initially fled the scene, he turned himself in to detectives the next day at the urging of family members, officials said.
Deputies were able to recover the knife used in the attack, which was described by Jimenez in his interview with sheriff’s detectives.
Jimenez remains in jail without bond. At the time of the attack, he was in the country illegally because he was deported in April 2010 after pleading guilty to an assault on Ruiz Nov. 14, 2009 that left her with a number of bruises and abrasions all over her body, a swollen eye and a bloody nose, according to the sheriff’s incident report.
According to that same incident report, Jimenez boasted to a deputy several times that “he would just get out on Monday and ‘Beat my wife’s ass again.’”
Ruiz’s sister told sheriff’s detectives that Ruiz let Jimenez stay with her and the boys as long as he worked, helped with the kids and stayed off of drugs and alcohol, Moulder said. But the relationship between Ruiz and Jimenez had been so “on and off” that there were times she would bring other men to family events, for example, Moulder said.
Jimenez is being represented by the Fayette County Public Defender’s Office and required the services of a court-certified Spanish translator during the hearing.
