The Albuquerque case moved from a three-count felony indictment to two child-abuse convictions before the court imposed a lengthy prison term.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A criminal case that began with a three-count felony indictment over the violent assault of an 8-year-old girl inside an Albuquerque restaurant ended with a 12-year prison sentence after defendant Nichalas San Souci pleaded guilty to two child-abuse charges rather than go to trial on the original case.
Court scheduling records show how the prosecution progressed over roughly 15 months. San Souci was arraigned in May 2025 in Second Judicial District Court under case number D-202-CR-2025-01654. He initially pleaded not guilty. The case continued through later status proceedings before a March 27, 2026, plea and a July 28 sentencing hearing. The district attorney’s office said the final judgment requires San Souci to serve 12 years in the New Mexico Corrections Department followed by three years of supervision.
The final convictions were first-degree and third-degree child abuse. They were not identical to the original three-count indictment. In May 2025, a grand jury charged San Souci with child abuse resulting in great bodily harm, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The charges arose from an April 25 attack at Saggio’s near the University of New Mexico in which authorities said San Souci struck an 8-year-old girl with a glass beer bottle and injured her neck with the broken glass.
That distinction matters because early public statements about the case described potential punishment based on the original indictment, not the convictions that eventually resulted. District Attorney Sam Bregman said in 2025 that San Souci faced decades in prison if convicted on the original charges. Those statements reflected the case as it existed before plea negotiations were completed. By March 2026, prosecutors instead announced guilty pleas to one count each of first-degree and third-degree child abuse, changing both the procedural posture and the sentencing framework.
The underlying incident remained the basis for the plea. Prosecutors said the girl was looking at a decorative water feature inside the restaurant when San Souci attacked her. Authorities said San Souci and the child did not know each other before that day. The girl suffered injuries that required 19 stitches. The Albuquerque Journal reported that she was taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital, treated and released. Her father later said she was expected to recover.
The initial investigation included surveillance video from Saggio’s. The Albuquerque Journal reported that an officer viewed footage showing San Souci take a bottle and strike the girl in the head with it. According to the criminal complaint described by the newspaper, the girl’s mother said she had accompanied her daughter to look at the restaurant fountain when the child began screaming. The mother then saw a man behind the girl and holding her around the neck area. The complaint became an important source for the detailed public chronology before the case reached a plea.
Witness intervention also figured in the early court record. The girl’s father, Britton Rose, told police he heard his wife yelling for the attacker to stop. The complaint said another patron struck San Souci with a tray and helped Rose subdue him during the confrontation. KOB later reported that several people in the restaurant moved to help. San Souci left the immediate interior area, and police arrested him outside the restaurant after witnesses identified him, according to the Journal.
The aggravated-assault allegation in the original indictment concerned a later part of the encounter involving Rose. Rose told KOB that after the first struggle, San Souci stood up and produced a knife. Rose said he initially thought the weapon might be directed at him, then believed San Souci was looking toward the child again. He moved between them. The Albuquerque Journal reported that officers found a knife when San Souci was searched following his arrest.
San Souci’s custody status was a major issue early in the prosecution. KOAT reported that he was held without bond and that a state filing argued the conduct was so extreme that conditions of release were inappropriate. At that point, none of the felony allegations had been proven, and San Souci had entered a not-guilty plea. He therefore remained legally presumed innocent while prosecutors prepared their case, a posture that remained in place until he later admitted guilt.
The plea on March 27 changed that. Once San Souci pleaded guilty to the two child-abuse counts, the case no longer required a trial to decide guilt on those offenses. Court records later listed the July 28 proceeding specifically as a sentencing hearing and noted the March plea. The district attorney’s office confirmed after sentencing that the judge imposed a dozen years in prison followed by three years of supervision. Law&Crime separately reported the post-release period as probation.
At the sentencing hearing, San Souci apologized to the victim and her family, according to KOAT reporting cited by Law&Crime. He told the court that he had been using drugs when the assault occurred, while acknowledging that this was not an excuse. He also said he would accept the punishment the court imposed. The available reports do not indicate that the court treated drug use as an explanation that negated criminal responsibility; by then, San Souci had already admitted guilt through his plea.
The case also illustrates why descriptions of criminal conduct can change as proceedings advance. In May 2025, news organizations correctly used terms such as “accused” and “alleged” because prosecutors were relying on a complaint, an indictment, video evidence and witness statements that had not yet produced a conviction. After March 27, the child-abuse offenses covered by San Souci’s guilty plea were no longer merely allegations. Reporting on the original aggravated battery and aggravated assault counts, however, still requires care because the public sources reviewed here identify the child-abuse counts as the offenses resolved by the guilty plea.
One fact remained consistent through those procedural changes: authorities said the child and San Souci were strangers. Police records and interviews also attributed to San Souci a statement that he attacked the girl because she had gotten in his way. Rose said his daughter had done nothing to provoke the attack. The statement became widely reported because it supplied the only publicly described explanation attributed directly to San Souci in the immediate aftermath, although it did not amount to a detailed account of motive.
For the child and her family, the legal progression followed a much more immediate medical crisis. The girl needed 19 stitches after the assault. Rose told KOB that his daughter was expected to be OK and said the family was grateful to the people who intervened. His interviews came while San Souci still faced the original charges and before any plea agreement had been reached. The family therefore spent much of the case waiting for a judicial resolution that was not certain at the time of those early statements.
The July sentencing supplied that resolution. San Souci’s case moved from arraignment and pretrial detention to a guilty plea and then a fixed prison term without a jury trial. The sentence is less than the maximum exposure prosecutors publicly discussed under the original indictment, but it still requires more than a decade in state custody and an additional three years of supervision after release.
Currently, the court’s reported disposition stands at 12 years in prison for the two child-abuse convictions followed by three years of supervision. The available public material reviewed for this report does not identify another unresolved trial stemming from the April 25, 2025, assault.
Author note: Last updated Aug. 29, 2026.