SAN ANTONIO — Months after a man was indicted for her daughter’s brutal murder, a San Antonio mother is making a plea for justice to be served.
Donna Barrientez said she fought off the killer trying to save her daughter’s life. It was a night she’ll never forget.
“He stabbed her in the heart, in the lungs, the kidney, the face,” said Barrientez.
It happened in the early morning hours of July 24, 2017 at the Terrace at Haven of Hope apartments. Barrientez said her grandson woke her up, and that’s when she heard her daughter’s screams.
“I saw the knife hanging out of his hand,” she said.
Barrientez was also injured in the incident, stabbed two times by the attacker.
“He growled in my face, and said ‘do you want me to kill you, too?” Barrientez said.
Barrientez’s daughter, Stacy Mascarenas, a 26 year-old single mother of two children, died from her injuries.
“Every day, I cry. Every day I wake up and tell her I’m so sorry that I couldn’t save her,” Barrientez said.
According to police documents, the killer jumped from a two-story window and got away. For 11 months, Barrientez waited for the arrest of her daughter’s killer.
Then, in June of 2018, Mascarena’s cousin, Benjamin Weston, was arrested and charged with aggravated assault and murder. The arrest affidavit said Weston admitted to being at the apartment around the time of the murder, and forensic tests proved Weston’s DNA was found on the knife.
And, just a week after his arrest Weston was released on bond. Barrientez said the bond amount was incredibly low.
“$150,000 bond for a murder of a young mother who did not deserve to die,” she said. “I hear all the time about murderers getting a million dollar bond. What makes my daughter's murder any less equivalent to in any of those others?”
Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzalez said the bond amount is average for the county.
“It may not seem like very much from other jurisdictions, but in Bexar County, setting a bond at $150,000 or so is pretty standard in this county. Keeping in mind that there are other factors that that a judge will consider. But again, that is not unusual to see a bond of that amount for a charge, even like this involving a murder,” he said.
Barrientez said she’s been trying to contact the DA’s office to determine when the trial will actually take place. She said the trial has been continuously postponed, and no definite trial date has been set.
Although the Bexar County District Clerk’s Office told KENS 5 Monday afternoon that no trial date had yet been set, Gonzalez said later that a trial date had been set for February 7, 2019.