With both defendants charged, investigators now describe the San Antonio attack as a coordinated assault during a child handoff.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The arrest of a second suspect has transformed a February stabbing outside a San Antonio YMCA into a broader felony case centered on alleged coordination between former partners. Police say the victim was attacked during a child custody exchange, then watched one suspect flee in his car.
What changed the story was not the fact of the stabbing, which officers encountered the night it happened, but the filing of parallel aggravated assault charges against Abel Ali Rivas and Melanie Sierra Gomez. With both defendants now named, investigators are no longer describing the case as a knife assault by a lone attacker. Instead, they say Gomez directed the victim’s movements, Rivas carried out the stabbing, and both played distinct roles in the events outside the Davis-Scott Family YMCA on Feb. 19.
The public timeline began at about 6:40 p.m., when officers responded to the YMCA area near Iowa Street and St. Anthony Avenue and found a 32-year-old man with multiple cuts to his stomach, torso and arms, according to local coverage of the affidavits. He was taken to a hospital and survived. At first, the visible facts were the aftermath: injuries, a crime scene and a victim who said he had been attacked while trying to pick up his children. Gomez was arrested within days. At that stage, authorities had already alleged she helped hold the victim during the assault, but Rivas had not yet been taken into custody. When he was arrested about a month later, police publicly tied the second half of the case together.
That later arrest gave prosecutors a cleaner theory of the crime. The victim, Oscar Javier Barbosa, told police he had gone to the YMCA to retrieve the two children he shares with Gomez. Investigators say Gomez was communicating with him by phone and told him first to go inside, then to come back outside. When he returned to the parking lot, Rivas allegedly confronted him. According to the affidavits cited by local outlets, Gomez accused Barbosa of getting his current girlfriend pregnant and then told Rivas to act. Police say Rivas stabbed Barbosa several times and Gomez pinned him against a nearby vehicle. Witness reporting adds another layer: Barbosa’s current girlfriend told officers she was on the phone and heard Barbosa ask, “Are you going to stab me over this?” before the line went dead.
The arrests also pushed the case from emergency response into court procedure. Gomez was reported released after posting an $85,000 bond. Rivas was held on a total bond of $105,000, with $100,000 tied to the aggravated assault allegation and $5,000 linked to a separate possession-of-a-controlled-substance charge. Those amounts do not determine guilt, but they show how the justice system is handling each defendant while the case is pending. Public reports do not yet show whether either defendant has entered a plea. Nor do they resolve whether prosecutors will seek indictment on the same charges now filed or pursue additional counts based on the alleged theft of Barbosa’s vehicle after the attack.
What makes the case stand out is how the affidavits split responsibility. One defendant is accused of using the knife. The other is accused of arranging the encounter and physically helping trap the victim in place. Under that telling, the state does not have to present the stabbing as a one-person act. It can instead argue that the attack unfolded through a sequence of coordinated steps: messages and calls before Barbosa stepped outside, a confrontation already waiting in the parking lot, and flight from the scene afterward. Police say Rivas drove off in Barbosa’s car, which had been left running. Gomez, they allege, lingered just long enough to continue insulting Barbosa’s current girlfriend before leaving herself.
The East Side setting adds local weight. The Davis-Scott Family YMCA is a recognizable community institution, and the violence described by police cut across that everyday backdrop of youth activities and family routines. The published records do not explain whether security cameras captured the scene or whether any independent bystanders gave statements beyond those summarized in news reports. Those are the kinds of details that often emerge later, after a case leaves the arrest-affidavit stage and moves into discovery. For now, the clearest public record remains the same one that fueled the arrests: Barbosa’s account, his girlfriend’s account and investigators’ conclusion that the attack was staged around a custody exchange.
Where the case stands now is straightforward but consequential: both suspects have been charged, one is out on bond, one has remained in custody on the reported bond amounts, and prosecutors have a fact pattern built around planning rather than impulse. The next milestone will be the court filings that show whether that theory hardens into an indictment.
Author note: Last updated April 16, 2026.