Gabrielle Jane Nestande, the former Newport Beach deb and California GOP family scion, was reportedly assaulted Saturday in a Texas jail where she is near the end of a 180-day sentence for criminally negligent homicide.
A fellow inmate in the Travis County Correctional Complex allegedly hit Nestande on her “head, face and body with closed fists,” according to an arrest affidavit.
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The document indicates Nestande, who was also grabbed by the throat and left with a laceration above her left eye and contusions to the right side of her head, did not know why 27-year-old Rachel Denise Castillo assaulted her.
Castillo, who was put in solitary confinement after the incident, was a new transfer into Nestande's section of the jail, according to the former Texas capital aide's attorney Perry Milton, who noted his client is scheduled to be kicked loose Sept. 20.
The alleged attacker's rap sheet includes convictions for theft, driving with a suspended license, prostitution and–like Nestande–driving while intoxicated (although Castillo did not kill anyone).
After a night in 2011 of beers, vodka and a shot to celebrate an award she received at the Texas Capitol, where the former campaign worker for Gov. Rick Perry served as an aide for a Republican representative, Nestande plowed into a nanny out for an early morning walk and left her to die.
The “Gabby Nasty” case was a huge sensation in the Austin area, where courtroom observers and the family of the late Courtney Griffin feared Nestande would cash in on her and her family's deep political connections. State prosecutors eventually took over the case from their local counterparts and despite no blood test having been administered to Nestande immediately after the incident, more serious charges of driving drunk and killing someone were filed against her.
Gabrielle Jane Nestande Whisked Off to Texas Jail for 180 Days for Hit-and-Run Homicide
OC Weekly Gabby Nasty archives
While jurors found her guilty of criminally negligent homicide, a judge who among other supporters heard from the defendant's father Bruce Nestande, an adviser to the Orange County Republican Party and previous state assemblyman, county supervisor and campaign chairman to various high-profile GOP candidates, sentenced her to 180 days in jail last March.
The Texas legal system is not done with Gabby, who is the half-sister of Assemblyman Brian Nestande (R-Palm Desert), as she is being sued in civil court for millions of dollars by Griffin's parents.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.