A radio host who has one of the top-rated shows among the city’s Hispanic listeners has been acquitted of a misdemeanor charge of making a criminal threat involving his son.
The court commissioner who acquitted Renan Almendarez Coello on Monday also dismissed eight other counts including battery and vandalism, prosecutors said.
Officers who had been sent to investigate a domestic violence call at Almendarez’s San Fernando Valley home on New Year’s Day reported finding traces of blood.
The officers said they learned that Almendarez’s adult son had attempted to intervene in a dispute between his parents and that Almendarez had allegedly stabbed him with a steak knife. Almendarez turned himself in two days later.
Almendarez’s attorney, Eugene Wellington Matthews, said the judge dropped the charges because of insufficient evidence. He said the blood was from Almendarez, who smashed his car windshield with his hand during the dispute.
“They did fight but he did not use violence against her,” Matthews said Tuesday.
Almendarez, who was born in Honduras, started his radio career when he was a teen. His show is titled “El Cucuy de la Manana,” or “The Boogeyman of the morning.”
