Man who assaulted Hatboro woman after she refused to abort his child is sentenced to prison
Police say Raymond Bautista, 37, of Allentown, hit the woman from behind and punched her in the stomach as she left for work last April.
Last April, Raymond Bautista donned a ski mask and black clothing and waited for the mother of his unborn baby to leave her Hatboro apartment to head to work.
Around 4:30 a.m., Bautista, 37, of Allentown, attacked the woman. He hit her from behind, and kicked her in the back and stomach. While she was on the ground, he got on top of her and punched her face. And when she began to scream, he ran.
The woman, a coworker of Bautista’s who was 15 weeks pregnant with his child and had recently told him she planned to keep the baby, suffered nasal fractures and abrasions, according to police.
On Tuesday, Bautista pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and no contest to aggravated assault of an unborn child.
He was sentenced to four to six years in prison.
The woman said in a statement read aloud by prosecutors the assault scars her to this day.
“I lost my peace of leaving home every morning,” she said. “… No woman deserves to be treated this way.”
After the assault, while the woman’s clothing was still soiled with blood, police asked whether she could think of anyone who would want to hurt her. The only person who came to mind, she said, was Bautista, a coworker at a Hatfield-based food processing company.
According to the affidavit of probable cause for Bautista’s arrest, the woman said that after he learned that she was pregnant with his child, he told her to take an emergency contraceptive. He also said he “did not want any involvement with the child’s life,” the document said
Bautista initially denied leaving his Allentown residence that morning and told police he had been sleeping.
Investigators later recovered footage of Bautista’s vehicle being driven from Allentown to Hatboro that morning, as well as clothing resembling the attire worn by the woman’s assailant when he was captured in Ring doorbell camera footage of the assault.
Presented with that evidence, police said, Bautista admitted to the crime. He told investigators he attacked the woman because she had been “talking [expletive]” about him at work.
Montgomery County Court Judge Steven T. O’Neill accepted Bautista’s guilty plea and, in addition to sentencing him to years in prison, ordered him to have no contact with the woman and to attend domestic violence counseling.
O’Neill commended the victim for facing Bautista in court and said that in her statement, he had “heard her courage.”
“I hope you’ve heard the same,” the judge told Bautista.