Virgilio Aguilar Méndez is Facing Murder Charges for an Officer Who Died of Natural Causes While Attacking Him

News@lemmy.world – 328 points – 5 months ago

An officer died of a heart attack while attacking Virgilio Aguilar Méndez; now Aguilar Méndez is facing murder charges.

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Fucking ridiculous. The kid didn't speak English. He didn't even speak Spanish. He was an Indigenous Mayan from Guatemala that only spoke a Mayan dialect. And this asshole cop decides to start searching him even though this poor teenager had no idea what was going on because of a lack of communication. The kid resists, the cop and two other cops knock him down, put him in a choke hold and taser him six times, then cuff him and put him in a squad car. At that point, the cop has a heart attack and keels over. Not during the struggle, but after the kid was choked, tasered, cuffed and put in a car. And yet the kid is facing murder charges.

I don't even understand how this could qualify for felony murder (which is what I'm assuming they're going for; the article only somewhat talked about the charges), since it was natural causes and not homicide. Sure, you've got an argument for the first element of resisting an officer with violence, but the second element isn't met; no one was killed.

Fucking bass ackwards Florida.

Exactly. It's Florida and he's indigenous. That's the only explanation here. He did nothing wrong except struggle. There's no indication he physically harmed any of them. The cop claimed he went for a knife, but the knife he had on him was a small pocket knife that couldn't have hurt the cop much even if he was attacked with it. Unless he started tasering the cop back while handcuffed in the squad car, I'm pretty sure he wasn't responsible.

This whole situation is bullshit for that kid, but that knife absolutely could harm or kill someone. It has a blade over 2", which is a smaller blade, but more than enough to kill. A box cutter is enough to kill someone and most of those have about an inch of exposure. You don't need a Ka-bar to kill someone, multiple major arteries and plenty of veins are accessible with a 2" knife for most bodies.

resisting an officer with violence

You misspelled "self defense".

I don't disagree; I was just using the verbiage from the Florida statute.

It's called "Felony Murder". The New Yorker had a fantastic article about how bullshit the whole idea of "Felony Murder".

This shock was swiftly followed by another. As a result of the crash, which all parties agreed was unintentional, two men stood accused of murdering his father and a friend who was cycling with him. One of those charged, twenty-five-year-old Sadik Baxter, had never laid eyes on the victims. At the moment of impact, he had been miles away, in handcuffs.

Recently, Ian spoke with me about the case while caring for his newborn daughter in Brooklyn; as we talked, he sometimes ran his hand down a thick beard he’d grown in homage to his dad. “It’s truly one of the cruellest ideas in the American legal system,” he said of felony murder. “And most people don’t even know it exists.”

EVERY JANUARY 6TH ATTENDEE SHOULD BE CHARGED UNDER THIS LAW!

In some states you can be charged for the death of someone during the commission of a felony. It is meant to be used for something like you and three people rob a bank and one of your crew shoots a guard. Even though you didn't pull the trigger, you catch the charge.

You can be charged with a felony resisting arrest if the cop is hurt while arresting you. So they are trying to extend it to the cop having a heart attack due to the strain he exerted while the guy was resisting arrest.

Bullshit application of the law, cop was being a dick, kid shouldn't have been here but didn't deserve none of this.

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Obviously the kid knew the officer's heart condition prior to him being stopped so the murder charge is expected.

Even the coroner admitted the kid wasn't responsible:

The ABC reporter, who obtained a copy of Kunovich’s autopsy report, wrote that it said, “These cardiac changes, while recent, predate the struggle with the subject. The circumstances do not fully meet the criteria for a homicide manner of death.”

But this is Florida and the kid isn't white...

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