Attorney says video disputes charges that farmworker caused officer’s fatal heart attack
Vergilio Aguilar Mendez is charged in the death of a Florida sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Kunovich, but his attorney says video shows the officer used excessive force.
On May 19, outside a Super 8 hotel in Florida, Virgilio Aguilar Mendez held his cellphone as a sheriff’s officer pulled up and ordered him to stop. As shown on an officer’s body camera video shared with NBC News last week, the officer said he wanted to know why Aguilar didn’t stop when he first made the command. The 18-year-old farmworker from Guatemala apologized, gestured to his hotel, and said “eating,” “tienda” (store) and “drink.” He appeared confused.
The officer, Sgt. Michael Kunovich, wanted to know if Aguilar had any weapons and ordered him to turn around, the video shows. He grabbed Aguilar’s arm and tried to pat down his shorts pockets. Aguilar, who doesn’t speak English, tried to pull away. An intense struggle followed as Kunovich, and later two more sheriff’s officers, tried to handcuff Aguilar.
Much of the stop and arrest, which took place just outside of St. Augustine, was captured by officers’ body cameras. The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office has said it shows a “by the book, textbook” arrest of a suspect whose resistance to arrest led — according to the department — to Kunovich’s death from heart failure. The office wants Aguilar held accountable for Kunovich’s death, which occurred minutes after the arrest.
Aguilar faces charges of aggravated manslaughter of an officer, a first-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison, and resisting an officer with violence, a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. He is being represented by a public defender in the criminal case.
An attorney hired by Aguilar’s family, Phillip Arroyo, provided copies of two body camera videos to NBC News. Arroyo said the footage shows that his client was a victim of police brutality in an arrest that never should have happened in the first place.
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