Investigators said Joe Herrera had grown increasingly focused on infidelity claims, a pattern they linked to a March 3 attack inside a Colcord Avenue home.
WACO, Texas — Before police said Joe Herrera stabbed his live-in girlfriend several times with a paring knife, investigators believe he had become consumed by the idea that she was cheating, a fear that now sits at the center of an aggravated assault family violence case.
In the arrest affidavit, detectives framed the March 3 incident as more than a sudden fight. They said Herrera’s jealousy had surfaced again and again in arguments about the woman’s cellphone, where she went and whether she had been with other men. That account gives the case its immediate weight: prosecutors are not only dealing with an alleged stabbing and a broken window, but with a record that police say shows repeated efforts to monitor and control a partner’s life.
The affidavit says Herrera “seems to be fixated” on whether his girlfriend is cheating on him. Officers reported learning that many past arguments between the couple involved his desire to look through her phone and his objections when she went places without his knowledge. In that light, the March 3 violence on Colcord Avenue reads in the police narrative as the sharpest point in a longer conflict. Investigators did not publicly describe every earlier dispute or say how many times officers may have been called before. But the wording they used shows the alleged assault did not arrive in a vacuum. Instead, detectives cast it as the latest and most serious turn in a relationship marked by surveillance, accusation and mistrust.
That lens shaped how police interpreted Herrera’s statements after officers arrived. He told them, according to the affidavit, that he was trying to get back into the house because he had seen his girlfriend naked with a man he did not recognize. He also admitted breaking a large front window and said an unknown Black man fled on foot after the glass broke. Investigators said they found no evidence that another man had been inside. The affidavit says Herrera apparently saw his girlfriend without pants through the window and concluded from that alone that she had another person in the home. For detectives, the claim about the fleeing man was not a fact they could prove, but a sign of how strongly Herrera appeared to believe a betrayal had happened even when the physical evidence failed to support it.
Only after laying out that mindset did police describe the violence itself. Officers responded to a 911 report that someone had been stabbed with a knife. At the house, they found Herrera in the front yard with blood on his shirt and a large window broken out. The woman told police Herrera had stabbed, or “stuck,” her in the chest multiple times with the tip of a paring knife. She said she was finally able to lock him outside. Officers photographed injuries they said were consistent with her account. Investigators estimated the assault happened roughly two to five minutes before Herrera was shut out of the home, leaving very little separation between the attack, the broken glass and the police response. Public records do not answer every question about the final minutes inside the house, including whether anyone else heard the argument before officers arrived.
The broader record also matters. The affidavit notes that Herrera has previous domestic violence convictions. A 2025 appellate opinion out of Texas said Herrera had been convicted in an earlier McLennan County case involving assault family violence by occlusion, habitual, and assault causing injury family violence with a prior conviction. In that opinion, the court described testimony that he assaulted Marisa Espinoza during a 2022 dispute and later called her from jail, admitting he grabbed her by the neck while pressuring her to have charges dropped. That case ended with concurrent 40-year prison terms that the appeals court upheld. The new Waco case had not yet appeared on the county docket when the March report was published, so the public record still left open when a prosecutor would formally file it and whether the prior history would be used to seek tougher treatment.
The result is a case built around belief and contradiction as much as around blood and broken glass. Herrera told officers he was reacting to another man in the house. Investigators said the evidence pointed instead to an imagined rival and to a domestic argument fueled by suspicion. The woman’s statement placed the knife in Herrera’s hand and the injuries on her chest. Officers’ observations placed Herrera outside with blood on his clothing and a broken window nearby. Those are the facts likely to anchor the case as it moves forward, while the unanswered questions concern motive, sequence and how prosecutors decide to present the pattern police described.
As of the latest public reporting, Herrera had been booked into the McLennan County Jail on $20,000 bond and was later no longer listed on the jail roster. The next concrete step was expected to be a docketed county case, a probable court appearance or other filing that would show how McLennan County prosecutors plan to proceed.
Author note: Last updated April 2, 2026.