CT man sentenced to 27 years in prison for stabbing wife more than 30 times during killing

A man was sentenced to nearly three decades in prison Thursday for fatally stabbing his wife in 2019 in a Cheshire home with two children inside.

Emanuel Dominguez-VillaGomez, 35, of Cheshire was handed down a 27-year prison sentence during a hearing in New Haven Superior Court, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice. The sentence came after he pleaded guilty in November to charges of murder and risk of injury to a minor in the deadly stabbing of his wife, 31-year-old Monica Pinto Dominguez, on Sept. 11, 2019, criminal justice officials said.

The family of Dominguez was able to participate in the sentencing proceedings virtually from their home country of Portugal.

According to officials, Dominguez-VillaGomez attacked his wife with a knife and stabbed her numerous times in their Cheshire home. Police responded to the Mountain Road home around 8:30 p.m. after receiving two 911 calls, the first of which was a hang-up. No one spoke during the second call, but dispatchers could hear screaming, according to Courant archives.

Judicial officials said two children were in the home at the time of the attack.

Police spotted Dominguez-VillaGomez through the windows in a pool of blood when they arrived at the home and as they tried to force their way inside, Dominguez-VillaGomez let them in, records indicate. He had cuts on his body and blood-soaked clothes.

Officers found pools and spatter of blood in the home and when they tended to Dominguez, she was able to say “He tried to kill me” and “He says I cheated on him,” before her condition deteriorated and she could no longer speak, Courant archives show.

Dominguez was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, where she died four days after the attack, according to state criminal justice officials.

An autopsy revealed Dominguez was stabbed between 30 to 40 times, including two long wounds to her neck. During a probable cause hearing in New Haven in March of 2020, Dr. Jacqueline Nunez of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner testified that she observed a total of 10 “sharp wounds” to the victim’s neck, 13 “sharp wounds” to her head and four wounds to her torso, as well as about 13 wounds to her hands.

When police spoke to Dominguez-VillaGomez the night of the attack, he told investigators his wife had attacked him and that he acted in self-defense, according to Courant archives. He told the officers, “We argued, she grabbed knives, she had it and I just went crazy.”

Staff at the hospital where Dominguez-VillaGomez was treated told police his injuries were not consistent with self-defense, archives show.

Investigators also spoke to one of the children at the home who said he heard arguing and saw his stepfather choking his mother, according to Courant archives. After seeing more arguing and blood, the boy said he tried to call 911.

At the time of the attack, Dominguez was in the process of divorcing Dominguez-VillaGomez saying the marriage had “broken down irretrievably,” according to Courant archives. They had been married since June 2016 and had one child together.