Nichalas San Souci pleaded guilty to two child-abuse counts after an attack inside an Albuquerque restaurant left the girl needing 19 stitches.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A New Mexico man who admitted attacking an 8-year-old girl with a beer bottle inside a crowded Albuquerque restaurant has been sentenced to 12 years in prison, bringing a criminal case that began with a stranger assault during a family dinner outing to its most consequential court ruling.

Nichalas San Souci, 24, was sentenced July 28 after pleading guilty in March to first-degree and third-degree child abuse. The Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office said he will serve the prison term in the New Mexico Corrections Department and then spend three years under supervision. A Second Judicial District Court calendar identified the proceeding as a sentencing hearing in State of New Mexico v. Nichalas Shane San Souci and showed that his plea had been entered March 27.

The sentence followed more than a year of court proceedings stemming from the April 25, 2025, attack at Saggio’s, a restaurant near the University of New Mexico. Prosecutors said the girl and San Souci did not know each other. The child was with her family and had gone with her mother to look at a decorative fountain or waterfall inside the restaurant when San Souci struck her in the head with a glass beer bottle and injured her neck with the broken glass. Authorities said the girl required 19 stitches. San Souci apologized to the girl and her family during the sentencing hearing, according to reporting from Albuquerque television station KOAT that was cited by Law&Crime. He said he had been using drugs at the time of the attack while also saying that drug use did not excuse what he had done. He indicated that he would accept the punishment ordered by the court. The remarks marked a significant change from the case’s early stage, when San Souci initially entered a not-guilty plea to felony charges after his arrest.

The prosecution began with allegations that carried substantially more potential prison time than the sentence ultimately imposed. A grand jury indicted San Souci in May 2025 on child abuse resulting in great bodily harm, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. District Attorney Sam Bregman said at the time that the case exposed San Souci to decades in prison if he were convicted as originally charged. By March 2026, however, the case had moved from a planned prosecution on those counts to a guilty plea to first-degree and third-degree child abuse.

The underlying evidence described in the early court record included restaurant surveillance video and accounts from people who were inside Saggio’s. The Albuquerque Journal reported that a police officer reviewed security footage showing San Souci take a bottle and strike the girl in the head with it. The child’s mother told police that she had taken her daughter to look at the restaurant’s fountain when a man approached. She heard her daughter scream and then saw the attacker holding the child from behind, according to the criminal complaint described by the newspaper.

The attack quickly drew other customers into the confrontation. The girl’s father, Britton Rose, told police and local news outlets that he heard his wife shouting for the attacker to stop and rushed toward his family. According to the criminal complaint, another restaurant patron hit San Souci with a tray, and the patron and Rose intervened. Rose later told KOB that people inside the restaurant stepped in to help his daughter before he confronted San Souci himself. The accounts portray a rapidly unfolding disturbance in which customers moved to separate the attacker from the child.

Rose also described a second danger after the initial assault. He told KOB that San Souci later stood up and produced a knife. Rose said he believed at first that the weapon might be directed at him, but he became concerned that San Souci was again looking toward his daughter and positioned himself between them. Police later arrested San Souci outside the restaurant. The Albuquerque Journal reported that witnesses identified him and that officers found a knife while searching him. The aggravated-assault charge in the original case was tied to allegations involving the girl’s father.

One statement attributed to San Souci became a central detail in the public account of the case. Court records and police reporting said he explained the assault by saying the girl had gotten in his way. Rose said his daughter had done nothing to provoke the encounter. Police said the two had no prior relationship, and prosecutors also described the attack as one between strangers. Those facts made the circumstances unusual even before the severity of the child’s injuries and the conduct captured by restaurant surveillance became part of the prosecution. The girl was taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital after the attack. The Albuquerque Journal reported that she received stitches and was released. Rose later told KOB that his daughter was expected to be OK, although he said the experience had shocked the family. His public comments focused both on the unexpected nature of the assault and on the people who helped inside the restaurant. He expressed relief during the early phase of the case that San Souci had been detained while the charges were pending.

San Souci remained in custody as the prosecution moved forward. At an early hearing, he pleaded not guilty, and court records showed that he was held without bond. A state filing quoted in local reporting described the alleged behavior as so far outside ordinary civil conduct that release conditions were not appropriate. The court calendar later documented continued proceedings in the case, including a December 2025 status hearing, before the March 2026 plea removed the need for a trial on the original indictment.

The guilty plea changed the legal posture of the case in an important way. Early news accounts properly described the conduct as allegations because the charges had not been proven and San Souci had pleaded not guilty. After the March plea, San Souci had admitted criminal responsibility for first-degree and third-degree child abuse. The July sentencing therefore was not a determination of whether he committed the offenses covered by the plea, but the point at which the court imposed punishment for crimes to which he had already pleaded guilty.

The 12-year sentence is shorter than the maximum exposure prosecutors discussed when San Souci faced the original indictment, but it represents a lengthy prison term followed by continuing court supervision. The district attorney’s office announced after sentencing that the prison term would be followed by three years of supervision. Law&Crime reported the post-release period as probation. The available public accounts do not establish additional conditions of that supervision, and no further criminal trial is expected on the counts resolved by the plea.

The sentencing also closes the most significant unresolved question that followed the attack: how much incarceration San Souci would receive after admitting guilt. The case began with a sudden assault in a public restaurant, moved through detention, indictment and a not-guilty plea, and later ended without a trial after San Souci changed his plea. More than 15 months after the girl was injured, the court imposed a 12-year prison term and three years of supervision.

The publicly reported disposition remains 12 years in the New Mexico Corrections Department followed by three years of supervision. The minor victim has not been identified in this report, and the available reporting does not describe any additional pending charges arising from the restaurant attack after the guilty plea and sentencing.

Author note: Last updated Aug. 29, 2026.