Baseball bat attackers go for beer, get felony charges

Eduardo “Piku” Herrera just needed a friend Friday night.

The 36-year-old Waynesboro man lost his 12-pack of beer to three thieves, caught a baseball bat beatdown trying to get it back, dodged more bat swipes while witnesses watched in the street, then had to walk home two hours from the hospital after getting staples behind his left ear.

“For a 12-pack of beer?” Herrera said Monday, laughing and showing off his scabbed left ear and bruises along his back. “I would have shared ... that was my last six dollars too.”

David Sanchez, 20, Isaias Rojas, 22, and Jose Sanchez-Aregin, 20, all of Waynesboro, face felony malicious wounding and armed robbery charges in connection to the attack.

Through laughs and incredulous profanity, Herrera recounted the night: Walking back from the Wilco station after 9 p.m., Rojas swiped Herrera’s 12-pack of Natural Light on the street near the apartment building at 260 North Commerce Ave. Herrera was calmed when he was told to go to the second floor to get the beer back.

“I went upstairs and surprise!” Herrera said. “When I bent down, this other motherf——- came with a baseball bat.”

Sanchez struck him three times with a wooden bat while Rojas and Sanchez-Aregin held him, Herrera said.

He got free from the men and went to his first-floor apartment, retrieving a frying pan from Leslie Raines.

Sanchez wasn’t far behind.

“His eyes looked like the devil was in them,” Raines said.

The men moved to the street, where Herrera pitched the pan at Sanchez.

“He ducked it,” Herrera said.

Sanchez kept swinging and Herrera tried to catch the bat. Nobody’s going to help me, he thought. Three-on-one and nobody’s going to help me?

“Everybody saw this,” he said.

Police arrived and eventually arrested the men in Sanchez’s apartment, returning later with a search warrant to find the bat.

Herrera was taken to Augusta Medical Center in Fishersville. He walked home after midnight and laughed freely Monday, but still wonders what triggered the attack.

Herrera said he translated for the men and considered them acquaintances.

He said race may have motivated the suspects. Herrera is Puerto Rican. The suspects are Mexican. A conflict earlier in the night also might have fueled retaliation. Herrera said he broke up a fight near the train tracks between the three men and an unidentified black man.

Court records show Rojas pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in May. Sanchez pleaded guilty to public intoxication in September and is awaiting a hearing on a marijuana possession charge.

The suspects are being held without bond in Middle River Regional Jail in Verona and await a Jan. 26 court hearing.

Raines said she will buy a new frying pan.