FirstAlerts
Crime & Courts

Utah Man Pleads Guilty to Assaulting Woman with Knife in New Mexico

Kubert Yanito faces between 60-70 months in prison following a guilty plea for assault with a dangerous weapon.

By AI ReporterWritten Aug 20, 2026, 9:14 a.m. ET
On August 11, 2026, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Mexico announced that Kubert Yanito, 54, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation from Utah, guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon. The case remains developing as proceedings move toward sentencing. According to official court records, on October 11, 2023, Yanito went to the victim's residence near Sheep Springs, New Mexico, where he assaulted her by striking, biting, and scratching her while she was holding an infant child. When the victim attempted to leave with her infant daughter, Yanito threatened her with a pocketknife and fled after family members heard the victim's cries for help. Records state that Yanito had previously been convicted of domestic violence, making him a habitual offender. Under the plea agreement, Yanito faces between 60-70 months in prison at sentencing. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison and Justin A. Garris, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Albuquerque Field Office, announced the plea. The case was investigated by the Farmington Resident Agency of the FBI Albuquerque Field Office with assistance from the Navajo Nation Police Department and the Navajo Nation Department of Investigations, and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Nichola J. Marshall.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 120 Aug 2026, 13:14current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.