A New York City man featured in an upcoming Netflix series will spend five years in a Colorado prison for stabbing the boyfriend of a “Bachelor in Paradise” star in a bar fight that started when the New York man’s girlfriend licked the reality star’s face.
Carlos Vega, 42, was sentenced to five years in the Colorado Department of Corrections on Wednesday, the culmination of what the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office described as a “bizarre stabbing incident.”
Vega was convicted of second-degree assault and menacing in September for the July 11, 2021, fight at the Clock Tower Grill near Lone Tree.
According to the district attorney’s office, Vega’s girlfriend randomly licked a stranger on the face, who happened to be “Bachelor” contestant and “Bachelor in Paradise” star Jessica Edwards.
The incident led to a confrontation between Vega and Edwards’s boyfriend, who punched Vega in the face. That’s when Vega pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the hand.
During a sentencing hearing Wednesday morning, Vega’s attorney told Douglas County District Court Judge Victoria Klingensmith that Vega’s traumatic childhood continued to impact his life and responses to stress, like the incident at the bar, but he was working hard to address his mental health.
Vega’s mother, Lourdes Gonzalez, was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death in front of him and his two siblings when he was 6 years old. Her murder is part of an upcoming Netflix true crime docu-series, the second season of “Homicide: New York.”
The attacker, Matias Reyes, pleaded guilty to murder and rape in Gonzalez’s case, as well as the rape of three other women, according to The New York Times.
Reyes later confessed to the 1989 rape and beating of a Central Park jogger after DNA evidence linked him to the crime, not the five wrongfully convicted teens known as the Central Park Five.
A Netflix producer was among those who submitted letters requesting leniency in Vega’s case, according to court documents.
Vega was a warm, kind person who was trying to heal and move forward with his life after he witnessed something horrible and was repeatedly failed by the systems meant to protect him, the producer wrote.
“I’ve read and heard details about the incident that led to his conviction. Carlos was defending himself and the woman he was with, after being attacked by a much larger man,” the producer wrote. “I have spent much time talking to Carlos about his trauma, and because he saw his mother murdered in front of his eyes while he watched helpless, he’s fiercely protective of his loved ones.”
But Klingensmith, the judge, said she had to consider his criminal history – including convictions for manslaughter and assault – and surveillance video of the fight that showed Vega reaching around a bartender who was breaking up the fight to stab the other man.
In a statement, Deputy District Attorney Sergio Renteria said the sentencing brings a measure of justice to the victim and reflects the seriousness of the crime.
“Many individuals suffer hardship and they don’t resort to stabbing other human beings,” Renteria said during the sentencing hearing. “His actions reflect a choice, a choice to use violence when it became available to him.”
Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.
