A Los Angeles judge ordered Andrew Jimenez to stand trial on a murder charge in the death of Mayra Jimenez.

Wednesday's order is a finding that the prosecution showed enough to go forward. It is not a verdict. The defense asked the judge to dismiss the charge for what the lawyer called insufficient evidence. She did not. The wound count is what the hearing record described through testimony and stipulations. Nov. 4 is an arraignment date, not a trial date.

KESQ and MyNewsLA reported that on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Theresa McGonigle ordered Andrew Jimenez to stand trial on a murder charge, finding sufficient cause for the case to proceed. KESQ published a City News Service account that night. MyNewsLA published the same hearing account. Both reported Deputy Public Defender Mark Carrillo asked the judge to dismiss the charge for insufficiency of the evidence, and that Deputy District Attorney Kelsey McKeever-Unger argued the motive was expressed before the killing and that Mayra Jimenez's injuries were "so gruesome" that it was undeniable it was a murder. Both reported Jimenez would turn 46 on Thursday and that he is charged in the Jan. 21 killing of his 46-year-old wife, a third-grade teacher at Wilshire Park Elementary School in Koreatown. Both reported the murder count includes an allegation that he used an ax. An order sending a case to trial is the judge's probable-cause ruling. It is not a jury's finding.

What detectives said at the hearing is the account both outlets attributed to the testimony and to stipulations. LAPD Detective Erica Pedroza said officers found Mayra Jimenez's body in the bedroom of the couple's home in the 5600 block of Satsuma Avenue in North Hollywood after Jimenez and three other family members came to a police station and he asked officers to check the house. Pedroza said, "There was blood all over." Detective Jason Haggis, asked whether he could identify her from a DMV photo, answered, "Quite frankly, her face was gone." Both outlets reported she was identified through fingerprints and that stipulations put the injuries at about 32 chop wounds, including 25 to the head, face and neck, and an internal decapitation at the neck. Haggis said an ax covered in blood was leaning against the bed and that there were no signs of forced entry. Those are the hearing accounts. They are not a verdict.

The same testimony, as both outlets reported it, is where the claimed motive sits. Haggis said he spoke with Mayra Jimenez's brother-in-law, who described a conversation at a hockey game in which Andrew Jimenez said his wife was cheating and showed screenshots from her phone. The detective said the brother-in-law did not think the images showed infidelity, and that Jimenez texted the next day and called it a big misunderstanding. Haggis said a notebook Jimenez's son turned over looked like a work notebook, not evidence of infidelity, and that Jimenez's phone could not be found and had moved around the area after Jimenez was in custody. The son is not named. A January statement from Los Angeles police, quoted in both stories, said investigators concluded the two were married and that this was domestic violence. That statement is from the day the body was found. It is not Wednesday's order.

Both outlets reported he remains jailed without bail and was ordered back to the downtown Los Angeles courthouse for arraignment on Nov. 4. KESQ and MyNewsLA reported he had been a firefighter-paramedic with the Glendale Fire Department since April 2008 and was placed on administrative leave in January, and that there was no immediate word on his current employment status. Fire Chief Jeff Brooks's January statement, as both published it, offered condolences and said the department would support staff. District Attorney Nathan Hochman's January statement, also in both stories, said no one sworn to protect others is above the law. The New York Post, which KESQ and MyNewsLA cited, reported the couple had been married since November 2014, from pictures on social media. A January statement and a 2014 date from social-media pictures are not the preliminary-hearing ruling. The ruling is that the case goes forward. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.