Spanglish Speaker Scuttles Slashy Sen's Story

Yesterday, Hiram Monserrate's lawyer discounted the testimony of Emergency Room nurse Dawn Kort in the senator's girlfriend-slash trial, citing a language barrier. Apparently, Monserrate's girlfriend Karla Giraldo speaks Spanglish, especially when she's drunk. But this is New York City, remember, the capital of the world. It turns out that Kort speaks Spanglish too. In fact, the Post reports that her father was from Panama, her mother from Puerto Rico, and she studied in Spain to boot. So much for that defense.

Kort claimed that Giraldo told her, in both Spanish and English, that Monserrate attacked her, "thrusting the glass forward — angrily." She also mentioned that even then Giraldo did not want her to speak with police. Newsday adds that Giraldo kept changing her story, though it's unclear whether that helps the prosecution or the defense.

The legal tide appears to be turning against Monserrate, a former cop. Yesterday plastic surgeon Hamayoun Sasson said of the operation in which he sewed up Giraldo's face with forty stitches, "she had so many cuts and puncture wounds that each one meant several additional injections" of anesthesia. That's more than twice the number of stitches that had previously been reported.