Police: Keys deputy threatened girlfriend with gun and choked her

A Florida Keys sheriff’s deputy threatened to empty his gun into his girlfriend and also choked her after she told him she wanted to break up, according to an arrest report released Wednesday.

Hernan Francisco Marin Jr. 23, who is assigned to the Lower Keys, was arrested Wednesday morning for domestic battery by strangulation and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and booked into the Stock Island Detention Center on $30,000 bond.

Marin told his girlfriend, during a phone call Tuesday in which detectives listened in, he was sorry and he was drunk during both incidents.

Marin, who earns $46, 080 a year from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and was hired in May 2017, was suspended and awaits a “pre-termination hearing,” according to Sheriff’s Office spokesman Adam Linhardt.

Marin is accused of abusing his girlfriend twice: Sept. 4, 2017 and Jan. 27. He allegedly pointed a gun at her last month after she she said she was calling police during an argument in which he picked her up by her neck and slammed her into the couch, the report states.

“Marin told her he is a deputy and it was her word against his,” Lindhardt said. “The victim said she decided to stay based on her financial situation.”

On Sept. 4, 2017, about two months after they got together, police said Marin choked her until she blacked outside her house after she said she wanted to break up. “My vision went black,” she said.

Marin became obsessive and suicidal, she told police, and she decided to try to work things out. They moved in together in December.

“She said Marin later began talking about murder/suicide and how he can’t live without her,” Linhardt said.

On Jan. 27, 2018 the couple went to Key West for some drinks to celebrate Marin’s birthday and when they returned home got into an argument.

Once home, the victim said Marin grabbed her, pushed her, picked her up by her neck and slammed her down on the couch and once again choked her until she again blacked out. He also allegedly pointed a gun at her back when she tried to leave to call the police.

She told detectives on the next morning, Jan. 28, Marin said he wasn’t going to shoot her with one bullet, but he was going to empty an entire entire magazine of bullets into her.

This story was originally published February 28, 2018 at 9:32 AM with the headline "Police: Keys deputy threatened girlfriend with gun and choked her."