Police say Joe Herrera stabbed his girlfriend on March 3, adding a new accusation to a criminal history that already included family-violence convictions.
WACO, Texas — When Waco police arrested Joe Herrera after a March 3 stabbing call on Colcord Avenue, the charge did not arrive in isolation: investigators said the 39-year-old already had domestic violence convictions on his record.
That history shapes why the case draws wider attention. Herrera now faces an aggravated assault allegation tied to family violence after police said his live-in girlfriend told officers he stabbed her multiple times in the chest with the tip of a paring knife. The allegation is serious on its own, but it also lands against an established court record that includes prior assault convictions and an appellate opinion issued less than a year before the new arrest.
A detective wrote in the March affidavit that Herrera has a history of domestic violence convictions. Publicly available appellate records give detail to that statement. In July 2025, Texas’ Seventh Court of Appeals upheld Herrera’s convictions for assault family violence by occlusion, habitual, and assault causing injury family violence with a prior conviction in a separate McLennan County case. The opinion said those convictions arose from a 2022 assault on Marisa Espinoza, with whom Herrera had been in an on-and-off relationship since 1996 and with whom he shared two children. The court said evidence at trial showed he hit Espinoza, grabbed her by the throat and threatened to kill her before later calling from jail and admitting he grabbed her by the neck. A jury assessed concurrent 40-year prison terms, and the appeals court affirmed them.
Against that backdrop, police say the new case began with another domestic confrontation. Officers were sent to a residence on Colcord Avenue after a 911 call reported that someone had been stabbed with a knife. At the scene, they found a large front window broken and Herrera standing in the yard with blood on his shirt, according to the affidavit. The woman inside told officers Herrera had stabbed, or “stuck,” her in the chest multiple times with the tip of a paring knife before she succeeded in locking him out of the house. Officers photographed injuries they said matched her statement. Investigators placed the attack within a very short window, saying the violence likely occurred only two to five minutes before Herrera ended up outside. That timing suggests the physical scene officers encountered was still fresh, though the public documents do not say whether the knife was recovered there.
The affidavit also says Herrera offered officers an explanation that did not match what investigators believed happened. Police said he claimed he saw his girlfriend naked in the house with a man he did not know, and he said that after he broke the window he saw an unknown Black man run from the residence. Investigators said they found no evidence another man had been inside. Instead, they wrote that Herrera likely saw the woman without pants through the window and jumped to the conclusion that she was with someone else. Police described him as seeming “fixated” on the idea that she was cheating and said many prior arguments involved him wanting access to her cellphone and objecting to her going places without his knowledge. That account places jealousy and control at the center of the state’s early theory.
In legal terms, the earlier convictions do not decide whether Herrera is guilty in the March 3 case. But they do provide context for how prosecutors and judges may view risk, bond conditions and any argument that the new allegation reflects an ongoing pattern rather than a one-time dispute. The county’s online court resources showed the new matter had not yet been docketed when the initial report was published. As reported Herrera was booked into the McLennan County Jail on $20,000 bond and later was no longer listed on the jail roster. Without a filed case number in public view, several procedural details remained unknown, including whether the allegation would stay as a single charge, whether a grand jury would consider it quickly and whether prosecutors would cite the prior history in future filings.
The public narrative, then, is layered. At the newest scene, police said they found broken glass, bloodied clothing and an injured woman who described a knife attack. In the wider record, Herrera already appears in court documents tied to earlier violence against a partner. Those two tracks, one immediate and one historical, are what distinguish this case from a routine arrest report. It is not only about what officers say happened inside a Waco home on one March evening. It is also about how that allegation fits into a longer legal record that was already visible in Texas courts before the latest call for help.
The case remained in an early posture as of the latest public information. Herrera had been arrested and bonded, but the next milestone was expected to be a formal county filing or hearing that would show how prosecutors intend to move the allegation through the McLennan County system.
Author note: Last updated April 2, 2026.