Former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez will be in court on September 26th for a pre-trial hearing.
According to reports, Velasquez has been in custody since February 28th after allegedly firing a weapon into a vehicle carrying three passengers including his alleged target Harry Goularte. As a result, Velasquez is facing multiple felony charges, the most serious being attempted murder which can carry a sentence of 20 years to life in prison.
Prior to the incident, Goularte was arrested on charges of molesting Velasquez’s 4-year-old son at a daycare run by Goularte’s mother and stepfather Paul Bender. Released without bail, Goularte was reportedly on his way to acquire a tracking device while awaiting his own court hearing on September 20th. That is when Velasquez allegedly ran their vehicle off the road and fired multiple shots into the car, striking Bender in the shoulder.
Since then, Cain Velasquez has been denied bail on three separate occasions while Goularte has remained free without bail. Velasquez’s attorney Mark Geragos his expressed frustration with the court’s rulings on both cases.
“You have to wonder,” Geragos said. “We’re already in upside-down world. Now, we’ve gone through the looking glass.”
“As we argued, not one or twice but three times on the bail hearings, he does not belong where he is, No. 1. And No. 2, the only victims here, which are his family, are the ones who really need him,” Geragos said in a recent interview with Court TV. “It’s frankly perplexing to me what is going through the mind of the people who are seeking or who have sought to keep him in custody.”
The District Attorney’s Handling of The Cain Velasquez and Harry Goularte Cases ‘Makes Absolutely No Sense’
While Goularte is listed as the complaining witness in the criminal lawsuit against Cain Velasquez, the district attorney’s office indicated that he will not take the stand. That decision leaves Geragos uncertain of how the prosecution plans to prove their case without a key witness.
“I look forward to seeing how they plan on proving the case when one of the witnesses they’re not going to call,” Geragos said. “The other two have invoked the fifth amendment. I’d like to know if they’re going to weigh that and get on the stand and subject themselves to cross-examination.
“Our investigation has already revealed that it’s apparent that the mother and the stepfather were intimately involved in everything that was going on at the daycare center. We’ve got a lot of questions for them. … Stay tuned. We’ll see you next month and we think that there’s going to be some surprises.”
Further complicating things is the fact that Cain Velasquez and Harry Goularte are both facing criminal charges from the district attorney with hearings less than a week apart.
“How do you serve those two masters?” Geragos said. “It makes absolutely no sense. This thing is really an abomination.”
Velasquez previously entered a plea of not guilty. If the case does go to trial, Geragos confirmed that his client would not shy away from testifying.
“My client wants to tell people his story,” Geragos said. “I’ll just leave it at that. He wants to tell them the truth. He wants the truth to come out, as do I. That’s why I said that it’s upside-down world. Usually, when you’re in the defense, the last thing you want to do is anything but to try your case but within the prosecution case. Here, in this case, I think when the truth comes out, people are going to be even more horrified than they already are.”
