UFC
Thiago Silva held without bond on multiple charges of aggravated assault with a firearm, disturbing allegations laid out by State
Feb 7, 2014 - 10:35:39 AM Thiago Silva held without bond on multiple charges of aggravated assault with a firearm, disturbing allegations laid out by State

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Thiago Silva appeared before a bond court judge in Florida on Friday morning, and the full picture of the allegations against him have come to light.

The UFC light heavyweight was initially charged with two counts of attempted murder against his estranged wife, Thaysa Silva, and Pablo Popovitch, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu trainer whose gym was the initial scene of Thursday's incident. After the hearing, the attempted murder charges were lowered to aggravated assault with a firearm, and Silva will be held without bond until a further court date.

According to the affidavit read by presiding Judge John Hurley during the proceedings, Silva and his wife separated back in 2012, but had an incident just last week that brought in the police. On Jan. 30, Ms. Silva called 911 after a domestic altercation, and told police that Thiago pulled a gun on her, put it in her mouth, and told her he was going to kill her.

No further incident came that day, but on Wednesday of this week, Feb. 5, Mr. Silva sent a threatening text message to Ms. Silva.

The judge relayed the paraphrased text message, which read, "I'm going to f*** you up and you're going to die. I'm going to hire someone to kill you and I'm going to move my girlfriend into the home."

On Thursday night, Feb. 6, Ms. Silva was training at Popovitch's gym when Mr. Silva pulled up in his vehicle, honking his horn to gain attention. When she approached, he was allegedly intoxicated, and pulled out a black Glock handgun, pointing it at her through the door.

Silva allegedly then threatened, "You have ten seconds to bring Pablo outside, and if he does not come out, I'm going to go in the gym and start shooting everyone."

There were 25 adult students in the center at the time of the incident. Popovitch exited the building and approached in an attempt to diffuse the situation, at which time Silva threatened to kill both Popovitch and Ms. Silva.

Popovitch then ran inside to call the police, Silva fled the scene back to his home, and subsequently engaged in a drunken stand off with the police before finally being brought into custody.

Judge Hurley did not find sufficient probably cause for attempted murder, as he cited numerous cases where threats were made with a gun in a domestic violence situation and those individuals were not charged with attempted murder.

The judge initially set bond for Silva at $2.5 million on the four charges he's facing, but then retracted that bond after further discussion due to the State's Attorney's concern that Silva was a further danger to his wife.

"The court is very concerned if you were released from custody that you would approach your wife again, confront your wife again, and you would bring great harm to her or kill her," Judge Hurley told Silva during the hearing, adding, "The court has no doubt that you could kill any and all of these people even without a gun."

The decision was bolstered by the belief that Silva could be a flight risk to his home country of Brazil. As Brazil does not extradite their own citizens to the U.S., him leaving for his home country would effectively end the case for the prosecution.