State Sen. Hiram Monserrate was simply so clumsy that he tripped while bringing his groggy girlfriend water, causing her face to somehow smash into the glass and accidentally slice her, his lawyer asserted yesterday.
Dismissing the December incident as nothing more than just a “freak accident,” lawyer Joseph Tacopina claimed that a drunken Karla Giraldo had jerked up and knocked the glass from Monserrate’s hand after she was startled by water that had spilled on her and woke her from a half-sleep.
Giraldo’s face and the glass collided, slicing her near her left eye, Tacopina said in opening arguments before Queens Supreme Court Justice William Erlbaum, who is hearing the case in place of a jury.
“It was a freak accident in no uncertain terms,” Tacopina said.
Adding to the confusion was a language barrier, the lawyer asserted. Giraldo is from Ecuador.
And Giraldo, 30, was so boozed up at the time that a cousin had to bring her home to Monserrate’s Queens apartment from a party after the host asked her to leave, Tacopina said.
“We’re not blaming her for anything,” Tacopina said. “But intoxication impairs one’s ability to perceive.”
He said the woman never intended to blame Monserrate (D-Queens) for what happened. He was arrested in the incident days before he was scheduled to be sworn is as a state senator.
Monserrate, 42, sat stone-faced as a prosecutor and his lawyer took turns laying out a case that could upend his life and political career.
Assistant District Attorney Scott Kessler painted the legislator as a jealous powder keg who erupted Dec. 19 when he found a cop’s PBA card in his girlfriend’s pocketbook.
“This case about power and control,” Kessler said. “He’s showing her he has power and showing her what he thinks of the guy who gave it to her.”
Kessler said the early-morning arguing got so loud that a downstairs neighbor banged on the ceiling with a yardstick. Moments later, Kessler said, the neighbor heard Monserrate say, “You want the water, here’s your water.”
The next thing she heard was a thud.
Prosecutors said Monserrate sliced Giraldo’s face with a broken glass in a heated argument.
“My face! My face! I can’t believe he did this to me,” Giraldo told a nurse after the fight, according to Kessler.