ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – A convicted murderer is behind bars again, facing seven felony charges including battery, kidnapping, firing into an occupied dwelling, child cruelty and weapons charges, along with violation of probation., after a standoff with police Wednesday morning.
St. Johns County sheriff's deputies got a call around 12:45 a.m. about a domestic disturbance on Sydney Street, near St. Joseph Academy, in St. Augustine.
Deputies said 59-year-old Herman Paul Solano forced his way into a woman's home and threatened to kill her, then barricaded himself with the victim in a bedroom. They said he threatened to shoot anyone who came in the home.
Investigators said not only did Solano break into the woman's house and threaten to kill her, but also trapped her inside her room with him and fired gunshots next to her head and then hit her in the face with the gun.
Luckily the woman was able to get out with her three children who were also inside the home, and that's when one neighbor noticed that something was wrong.
Barbara Rohrbacher always watches TV early in the morning, but Wednesday morning, she heard something she knew wasn't a part of the show.
"We could hear something in the background and eventually I could tell it was like, ‘Help me help me,'" Rohrbacher said.
She went outside to see what it was, and noticed a woman walking up and down the street.
"She was running around knocking on people's doors saying, ‘Help me help me,' and I couldn't really see that well but I thought maybe her head had some blood on it and I was, ‘What's wrong? What you need help for?' All she kept saying was, ‘Help me, help me,'" Rohrbacher said.
Rohrbacher called 911 and minutes later, St. Johns County Sheriff's Office SWAT team members and crisis negotiators were there, focused on the home on Sidney Street.
The SWAT team negotiators spoke with Solono, but when he stopped communicating, they forced their way into the home with tear gas and found him unresponsive. He was taken into custody, then hospitalized for what deputies said appeared to be self-inflicted stab wounds. When he was released, he was booked into jail and ordered held without bond.
Skylar Rudd and Luann Kelly-Rudd watched as the scene unfolded in what he calls a normally quiet community.
"Evidently it doesn't matter where you live, it just doesn't," Skylar Rudd said.
Still the Rudds wonder if more could have been done.
"That should have not happen. Somebody could have gotten killed. A lot of somebody's could've gotten killed. And it angers me," Luann Kelly-Rudd said.
Neighbors said this wasn't the first incident Solano had in the area. He previously got into a fight with a neighbor and that's one of the reasons why management had banned him from coming to the home. In fact, the landlord said they had people watching to make sure he didn't get back inside, but somehow he did.
Prison records show that Solono was convicted of second-degree murder in 1988 in the stabbing death of a 17-year-old girl and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released four years later.
Solano has been in and out of jail and prison several times since, including serving four years for hit-and-run causing serious injury in 2009.
In the four years since his release, he was arrested three times in St. Johns County on charges of felony battery and was briefly jailed earlier this summer for simple assault.