Man charged with choking wife with rope

TAMPA BAY - Hillsborough County Sheriff deputies arrested a man who they say hid in his wife's car and began choking her with a piece of rope as she drove to work.

According to Hillsborough Sheriff's Office spokesman Larry McKinnon, deputies received a tip that Alexis Yero, 43, was at a relative's house on North Thatcher Avenue Sunday afternoon.

When they arrived on scene, Yero fled. K-9 deputies were able to track him to a nearby shed where he was hiding.

The arrest stemmed from a Wednesday morning incident when Tania Martinez, 35,  Yero's estranged wife, got into her car to go to work just before 6 a.m.

Deputies say Yero was hiding in the back seat of Martinez's Nissan Altima and started to choke her with a rope as she headed down the road.

The struggle caused Martinez to lose control of her car, striking a fence at 4502 Paris Street West.

As the car hit the fence, the car was launched into the air, flipped completely around before landing on it's wheels.

Martinez was  knocked unconscious temporarily. As she came to, Yero trying to strangle her again with the rope, according to deputies. For unknown reasons Yero eventually fled the scene.

He was transported to the Hillsborough County Jail.