An illegal migrant from Guatemala is facing a manslaughter charge after a Florida sheriff’s deputy suffered a fatal heart attack during a May struggle with the 18-year-old in St. Augustine.
Stakes in the legally complex case escalated this week after Virgilio Aguilar-Mendez retained a civil rights attorney who claims he was wrongfully stopped before the encounter which led to St. Johns County Sergeant Michael Kunovich’s death.
Aguilar-Mendez entered the US illegally through the southern border last year aged 17 and eventually made his way to St. Augustine to work on farms, court papers state.
Kunovich, a 52-year-old veteran officer, first spotted the laborer in the parking lot of a Super 8 motel around 9 p.m. on May 16.
According to an arrest report, the teen began walking away from the area after he saw Kunovich approaching in his marked cruiser.
“He checked out with him to simply say ‘Hey, why are you on this property trespassing?’” St. Johns County Sheriff Robert Hardwick said during a news conference on the case last month. “That was a simple thing, simple task.”
Bodycam footage of their interaction revealed Aguilar-Mendez’s limited English.
“When you saw me, you walked away,” Kunovich can be heard telling him, before Aguilar-Mendez appears to reference “drinking” somewhere nearby.
Kunovich later asks for his identification and his name.
“Sorry, I no speak English,’ he responds.
The exchange grows tense after Kunovich turns him around to check him for a weapon, placing his hand on one of his pockets.
The teen — who later said he feared deportation because of the stop — appears to pull away from Kunovich at that point, prompting the deputy to raise his voice.
“Don’t pull away from me,” he yells.
“No, no, sorry, sorry,” the migrant responds while attempting to leave the scene.
Additional officers arrived and struggled to subdue Aguilar-Mendez on the ground.
He continued to resist despite being tased several times, according to an arrest report.
“While fighting on the ground with Sergeant Kunovich and other deputies, the defendant grabbed Sergeant Kunovich’s taser in an attempt to gain control of the weapon,” the document states.
“After gaining control of and placing the defendant in handcuffs, he armed himself with a folding pocket knife, which he retrieved from his shorts pockets. Deputies gave loud verbal commands to drop the knife, which were ignored and the knife had to be forcefully removed from the defendant’s hands.”
After Aguilar-Mendez was placed in handcuffs, Kunovich collapsed at the scene from a heart attack and later died at a local hospital.
Aguilar-Mendez was charged with aggravated manslaughter of an officer and resisting arrest with violence and remains behind bars without bond.
In a motion seeking a bail package, his prior public defender wrote that he lived in a room at the Super 8 with other migrants and was on the phone with his mother when Kunovich approached him.
The lawyer asserts he didn’t know why he was being stopped and called out for his family during the struggle.
The migrant’s new attorney, Philip Arroyo, told Action Jax last week that he believes his client’s civil rights were violated, calling the situation a “grave injustice.”
But Hardwick has defended his officers’ actions, asserting that Aguilar-Mendez’s refusal to comply sparked the tragedy.
Officers from Florida and beyond attended Kunovich’s May funeral in Jacksonville, including his two young sons.
“What many don’t know is how much we say we were proud of him, his hard work and his moral compass,” his son, Michael Kunovich Jr. said, according to the Florida Times-Union. “He had the extraordinary ability to come home after a long shift and be Dad.”