CHULA VISTA, Calif. (CNS) - A man and woman who were involved in a pair of South Bay altercations last year that left one man stabbed and another shot were sentenced Wednesday.
Gillio Calais Repetto, 20, and Serenity Nieblas, 21, pleaded guilty to charges of assault with a deadly weapon for the February 2022 stabbing of one driver in the Eastlake area and the May 2022 shooting of another at a Chula Vista intersection.
Both victims survived the incidents, which initially led to attempted murder charges.
Repetto was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in state prison, while Nieblas was sentenced to one year in county jail. Nieblas' sentence includes three years of probation and a suspended seven-year prison term, meaning she faces seven years in state prison if she violates the terms of her probation.
Police and prosecutors described the altercations as apparent road rage incidents.
After the sentencing hearing, Nieblas' mother, Renee Nieblas, said outside court that both incidents were acts of self-defense in which the other drivers attacked the young couple and made violent threats against them.
In both incidents, Nieblas was the driver and Repetto was a passenger.
On Feb. 16, 2022, Repetto and a male driver of another vehicle got out of their cars to fight on the side of the road in Eastlake.
At an arraignment last year, Deputy District Attorney Allen Brown said the victim got Repetto onto the ground, then was hit in the back several times by Nieblas.
Though the victim initially believed he'd only been hit by Nieblas, he later discovered he'd actually been stabbed eight to nine times, Brown said.
The prosecutor also alleged that on May 4, 2022, Nieblas' car and another vehicle got into an altercation on the road, then stopped at the intersection of Olympic Parkway and Town Center Drive, where Repetto and the victim got into a fistfight.
Repetto then got back into Nieblas' vehicle and, from the car, opened fire on the victim, a 34-year-old Chula Vista resident who was shot in the bicep and hand, Brown said.
Renee Nieblas said that in the Eastlake incident, Nieblas acted in defense of Repetto, who was being beaten by the other driver and had to be restrained by a group of bystanders.
In the Chula Vista incident, she said the other driver had been chasing her daughter's car. When the cars stopped at the intersection, she said the other driver brandished a knife and threatened to stab Nieblas, who was eight months pregnant at the time.
