Cris Barrish

The News Journal

A suspended Delaware State Police trooper who had stalking charges dropped in a September plea bargain has been arrested again, charged with strangulation after attacking his wife at their Bridgeville home, police said.

Andrel Martinez's wife was holding their 10-month-old daughter when he grabbed her by the throat late Thursday, said Sgt. Paul G. Shavack, the agency's spokesman.

Martinez, a trooper for 16 years who was assigned to Troop 7 near Lewes, is on probation and has been suspended without his $81,200 annual pay plus benefits since his arrest in March for allegedly stalking a former girlfriend and other offenses after they broke up in 2013.

That case was resolved when prosecutors dropped felony stalking and dozens of other charges in return for a guilty plea to illegally obtaining criminal history.

His arrest Friday was detailed in an arrest warrant made public late Saturday.

Tensions had been high in the household on Wesley Church Road for about two days, Martinez's 37-year-old wife told police, after she found photos of one of his former girlfriends in a bedroom dresser and confronted him, the warrant said. The couple argued and Martinez called his wife a "whore,'' the warrant said.

About midnight Thursday, the couple argued again and Martinez picked up a lamp on the nightstand and held it in a way that she feared he was going to strike her, she told police. He threw the lamp down and approached her as she held the baby in her left arm, then grabbed her by the throat and "forced her backwards into the master bathroom,'' the warrant said.

"She could not breathe'' or talk, so she hit Martinez on his head and shoulder and kneed him in the groin area until he let go of her throat, the warrant said.

Martinez took her cell phone so she couldn't call anyone about the incident, and followed her around the house until the next afternoon, when she got ready for work. He finally left to work on a home he owns in Milford and she drove to Troop 5 near Bridgeville to file a report, the warrant said.

State police charged Martinez with strangulation, second-degree unlawful imprisonment, menacing, endangering the welfare of a child and malicious interference with emergency communications, Shavack said.

Martinez was arraigned and sent to Sussex Correctional Institution on $8,750 cash bond, which he posted Saturday and was released.

When Martinez was arrested in March, police said that in the eight months after he and another woman separated in March 2013, Martinez made multiple harassing and threatening visits to her home, along with a number of intimidating phone calls, voice mails, text messages and emails.

Martinez also was accused of using the Delaware Justice Information System to conduct criminal history searches on the woman's friends, as well as checking on the owners of vehicles parked at her apartment complex. He and the woman also have a daughter.

In September, he pleaded guilty to illegally getting criminal information in Kent County Superior Court and prosecutors dropped the stalking and other charges. The counts he pleaded guilty to involved records of four people, Attorney General Beau Biden's office said then.

Then-Biden spokesman Jason Miller said then that prosecutors also suggested to the judge that Martinez "should also be prohibited from working as a trooper because of his unlawful use of criminal history information."

At the time, Martinez' attorney, James Liguori, said he and his client were "hoping to go through the process there to keep his job" as a trooper.

Contact senior reporter Cris Barrish at (302) 324-2785, cbarrish@delawareonline.com, on Facebook or Twitter @crisbarrish.