Stabbing Victim’s Car Blocked Limo : Trial Due in Attack on Driver

A Sun Valley construction worker was ordered Friday to stand trial on charges that he stabbed a man whose stalled car was blocking a limousine in which he was a passenger.

After a preliminary hearing, San Fernando Municipal Judge James E. Satt ordered Salvador L. Saldana, 28, to stand trial on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

Saldana is accused of stabbing Robert Camacho, 21, of Sylmar in the chest and lower back shortly after midnight June 28 when Camacho was unable to start his car, parked near Saldana’s home on Runnymede Street.

Saldana also faces one misdemeanor charge of brandishing a weapon at Camacho’s wife and baby.

However, Satt dismissed a felony charge of assault with a deadly weapon against Saldana after his attorney, Carl Osborne, argued that there was no evidence that Saldana actually intended to harm Hermina Camacho.

Robert Camacho, who was hospitalized in critical condition but has since recovered, testified Friday that he blocked the limousine for about 10 minutes while he and his wife ran in to pick up their infant son and small daughter from a baby sitter after attending a wedding.

After putting the children in the car, Camacho testified, he found he could not start it.

Hermina Camacho testified Friday that her husband asked Saldana to wait as he and a relative struggled to start the car with a screwdriver.

Saldana “was telling him to move it now,” she testified. “I said, ‘Can’t you see, we can’t start the car?’ Then, I heard my husband yell, ‘He stabbed me!’ ”

Hermina Camacho testified that she picked up her 9-month-old son and began walking toward the house and that Saldana, grasping a knife, came toward her.

‘I Was Panicked’

“He told me if I moved he was going to kill me and my baby,” she said. “He kept looking at my baby. I couldn’t say nothing. I was panicked,”

She said Saldana backed off after an unidentified man got out of the limousine and spoke to him.

Saldana was arrested Sept. 23 outside his home after a beeper found at the scene of the stabbing was traced to him.

He is being held in Los Angeles County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail. His bail was raised from $250,000 in the summer after an informant told police that Saldana had threatened to kill Camacho if he testified.

Sandana is scheduled for arraignment in Superior Court Nov. 25. If convicted, he could receive a maximum sentence of life with the possibility of parole.