East Cobb Man Sentenced for Stabbing Ex's Personal Trainer

A Marietta man will be spending over a decade in prison after pleading guilty to stabbing his ex-girlfriend’s personal trainer at least six times in December, the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office announced Monday.

Gabriel Emanuel Brazil was sentenced to 40 years, with 16 to serve behind bars, after he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, aggravated battery and drug possession. Brazil must also pay his victim $89,000.

“This is essentially a domestic-violence case, because this defendant sought to maintain power and control over his former girlfriend,” said ADA Sherwin Figueroa, who prosecuted the case. “Although he had no violent history, his possessiveness and jealousy led him to stab and permanently scar an innocent person.”

Brazil moved into an apartment directly above his ex’s after the couple broke up, and continued to try to meddle in her life, prosecutors said. The woman hired a personal trainer to come to her apartment and work out with her, but he stopped seeing her after Brazil confronted him.

In December, the woman asked the trainer to return. The two men argued outside the apartments, then Brazil ran upstairs to his apartment and the trainer went to the woman’s apartment. Soon afterwards, Brazil entered the downstairs apartment and stabbed the trainer “to the point that his intestines were visible and lacerating his heart, kidney and liver,” prosecutors said.

Police followed a blood trail to Brazil’s apartment, where they also discovered marijuana and methamphetamine.