A veteran Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was convicted Tuesday of assaulting his girlfriend who confronted him in Anaheim on Christmas Day for banging a second woman.
Mark Eric Hibner, a 22-year vet of the LASO, could get seven years and four months in prison at his Nov. 15 sentencing after being convicted of two counts of domestic battery with corporal injury and three counts of making criminal threats, all felonies.
]
Hibner had been in a romantic relationship with the woman he assaulted for several years before, on Dec. 25, they argued after she discovered “a sexually suggestive voicemail from another woman on the defendant's cell phone,” prosecutors said after his arrest. The argument continued into the next day, when the deputy hit her, grabbed her hair, spit on her, threw a lit cigarette at her and punched her in the chest.
Three days later, Hibner grabbed his beloved by the hair, pulling it side to side, and calling her derogatory names. He is also pushed her onto a bed, straddled her, pinned her down with his knees on her shoulders and covered her mouth with his hand so hard she was left with teeth marks inside her mouth. Hibner repeatedly swore at the woman and threatened to kill her.
The next day, Dec. 30, Hibner dragged the woman through their living room by her hair, threw her on the floor, straddled her and choked her with his forearm across her throat, before covering her mouth, pinching her nose and threatening to make her pass out. She responded by crying, begging him to stop and banging her foot on the floor to wake the neighbors. Hibner responded to that by spitting on her, throwing a lit cigarette at her and calling her derogatory names.
When Hibner's now-ex are met with him on Feb. 19 for a child custody exchange–they have a minor child together–the deputy threatened to kill her if she appeared in court at a hearing scheduled for two days later. The woman planned to take out a restraining order against him.
City News Service quotes Hibner's attorney, Thomas Szakall, saying the LASO relieved his client of duty without pay as a result of the conviction.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
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.