Hialeah family arrested after a post-MMA match brawl with bullets and chairs flying
A Hialeah woman accused of throwing a chair that caused an eye and head injury to a mixed martial arts judge during a post-match brawl turned herself in to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office Monday.
In doing so, 28-year-old Rosmery Estevez-Hernandez joined her husband, 31-year-old Yasmani Hernandez-Romero, and her father-in-law, 57-year-old Antonio Hernandez Montes De Oca, in facing charges connected to a March 20 melee at Lake Worth’s Bamboo Room that also featured a stampede after shots were fired into the air.
Estevez-Hernandez pleaded not guilty to felony battery and disorderly conduct. Hernandez-Romero, who allegedly used a glass hookah not for smoking, but for head smashing, was charged with disorderly conduct. He’ll be arraigned on June 29. Montes De Oca was arrested on charges of shooting into a building and disorderly conduct.
Video obtained by NBC6 for a March 22 report shows a hefty man in a red shirt raising his arm as if to shoot the ceiling and firing. The Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office said it was Montes De Oca who pulled the gun from his wife’s purse, as seen on video used by Palm Beach market station CBS12 in its March 23 report.
The gunshots didn’t hit anybody, PBSO said, but “caused widespread hysteria and further injuries to bystanders.”
After fists and kicks flew, so did chairs and gunshots
According to the arrest reports, the family was part of a group at the Rize FC MMA card to support Team MMA Cuba bantamweight Alexis Fernandez in his fight against Boca Raton’s Felipe Valentim. The report says Hernandez-Romero bought six tables at $1,200 a pop, closest to the octagon and behind the judges’ tables.
Judge John Rivera, a Pembroke Pines resident, told investigators that a woman sitting at table No. 6 slung a chair that injured him and that “the people at table 6 were disruptive the entire evening by yelling profanities, arguing with referees, throwing things and causing disturbances.”
Rivera later picked Estevez-Hernandez’s picture from a photo array as the chair-throwing woman.
PBSO cobbled together an account of the brawl from witness accounts and “numerous cellphone videos.”
By PBSO’s description, the moment the fight ended, fan fury outside the octagon exceeded any fighter fury inside the octagon during the fight.
After the referee called the fight for Valentim, PBSO says video shows Estevez-Hernandez motioning two men with their group to go into the octagon, “which is against MMA rules.”
Each of the men would be pulled back from going through the octagon’s gate, but, soon after, Estevez-Hernandez and Hernandez-Romero got into arguments with other spectators.
“As Hernandez-Romero and Estevez-Hernandez were ushered away from the confrontation, a hookah is in Hernandez-Romero’s right hand,” the reports said. “An unknown male continued to push Hernandez-Romero and Estevez-Hernandez backwards, causing her to fall to the floor.”
The brawl began despite efforts of another man, who was hit by a cup of liquid thrown from above, and Montes De Oca to calm the crowds. But that didn’t help.
“Chairs began to be thrown, a big brawl was initiated, there was nowhere I could go, I was trapped right in the area I was in,” Rivera told investigators. “So, I tried to exit the area and a Hispanic woman — black dress, black hair — literally thew a chair at me when I didn’t have any involvement whatsoever.
“I stumbled back, I saw the husband of the woman smash another glass hookah on another gentleman,” Rivera continued. “I grabbed the individual, restrained him and tried to wait for authorities to come and arrest the individual. Then, I turned around and saw another, older aged gentleman in his mid-60s, gray hair, red shirt, with his hand up in the air and shot a firearm.”
Rivera said the man he was holding said the man with the gun was his father and asked Rivera to let him go to calm his father down. Rivera then said he felt a moment of true fear when the gunman looked at him before being hustled out by two other men.
“Rivera sustained damage to his cornea with unknown internal damage to his eye area,” the report said.
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