Jurors convict fugitive who fled McHenry County to Mexico before trial

Earlier this week, jurors convicted a man on several battery and assault charges during a trial that took place while the man presumably was in Mexico.

Prosecutors received a letter June 14 from a deportation officer who claimed 29-year-old Isabel Zarate-Gonzalez had appeared at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

McHenry police arrested Zarate-Gonzalez in April 2016 on claims that he raped his wife, Nicole Zarate-Gonzalez, and threatened her with a knife.

At a March 28 court date in McHenry County, a Spanish interpreter told Isabel Zarate-Gonzalez that he could be tried, convicted and sentenced in his absence.

When he didn’t appear in court Monday, the trial proceeded without him.

“I feel like he left, hoping that the charges would go away and then he could come back,” Nicole Zarate-Gonzalez told the Northwest Herald.

The charges against Isabel Zarate-Gonzalez stem from Nicole Zarate-Gonzalez’s statement to police April 27, 2016.

During an argument between the separated couple two days earlier, Isabel Zarate-Gonzalez held down Nicole Zarate-Gonzalez on the couch and put a knife to her throat, according to a criminal complaint.

He then stabbed a portion of the couch next to Nicole Zarate-Gonzalez’s head twice before chasing her into the upstairs bedroom and pinning her down, she said.

“While he did it, he said that it wasn’t rape, because I was his wife and that’s what a wife does for her husband,” Nicole Zarate-Gonzalez said.

Threats of abuse continued for the next two days until Nicole Zarate-Gonzalez made a police report and had doctors perform a rape kit test.

Jurors reached their verdict Wednesday afternoon, convicting Isabel Zarate-Gonzalez of aggravated domestic battery, domestic battery and aggravated assault. They found him not guilty of criminal sexual assault.

Isabel Zarate-Gonzalez faces as many as seven years in prison and would be required to serve at least 85 percent of the sentence. His sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 28.

Prosecutors declined to say whether efforts to extradite Isabel Zarate-Gonzalez are underway. Nicole Zarate-Gonzalez, however, wants to look Isabel Zarate-Gonzalez in the eyes the day he’s sentenced.

“I want him to know he has to live in fear every day in Mexico so that he can’t live in peace over there,” she said. “I want him to know that I’m looking for him.”