The accused of domestic violence while living in San Francisco and San Bruno continued today with more examination of his wife and two unexpected twists at the end of the day.
During the hearing, Yuka Nagaya, the wife of Yoshiaki Nagaya, the vice consul for the Japanese embassy in San Francisco, who was and charged with 14 counts of domestic violence, recalled how her husband allegedly beat her repeatedly while they lived in an apartment in San Bruno.
When prosecutor Tricia Povah asked her about several incidents of alleged abuse, Nagaya said she was strangled, hit, kicked and dragged out of a car by her husband.
Her tooth was knocked out during one of the incidents, she said, and she lived in fear for her life after her husband threatened to kill her.
Although the abuse apparently started in 2010, it wasn't until this March when Nagaya finally went to the police, she testified.
"What made you finally decide to go to the police?" Povah asked her.
"After the year started, my husband's violence became so intensified until I felt" I could have been killed," Nagaya said through an interpreter.
In another twist to the hearing, Superior Court Judge Lisa Novak had to stop the proceeding midway when she learned that Nagaya had been recording her testimony on her phone.
When defense attorney Gerrick Lew began questioning Nagaya, many of her answers were elusive and she claimed she couldn't understand his questions.
At one point, Lew continued to ask her if she remembered looking for a photo on her husband's cell phone because of her suspicion that he was having an affair with a fellow embassy colleague.
"I do not remember," she continued to say.
Lew then placed on a projector a statement she reportedly made to San Bruno police about the domestic abuse—she made it in Japanese and it was translated to English—and asked her if she remembered giving the statement.
Nagaya again claimed she didn't remember.
With the second day of the hearing taking three and a half hours, Novak decided to have the hearing continued to Friday.
Other details that surfaced during today's hearing were the fact that Nagaya and his wife are currently going through a divorce and that Yuka Nagaya filed a civil lawsuit on Monday. The details of the lawsuit have not yet been made public.
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