An Officer Died of Heart Failure While Attacking Virgilio Aguilar Méndez. Now He Faces Manslaughter Charges

On the night of May 19, 2023, Virgilio Aguilar Méndez, 18, was eating some food at the parking lot of the Super 8 Motel he was staying at in St. Augustine, Florida. Aguilar Méndez, a Guatemalan immigrant of Maya descent who was sharing a room at the motel with fellow farmworkers, was approached by Sergeant Michael Kunovich who believed the teenager’s conduct was suspicious. As the police officer started to question Aguilar Méndez, the teenager, who speaks the Mayan language Mam, couldn’t understand the questions and started apologizing.

Despite an evident language barrier, officer Kunovich continued questioning and searching Aguilar Méndez. The startled teenager resisted. When two other deputies were called in to assist Kunovich, Aguilar Méndez was thrown to the ground and repeatedly stunned by Kunivich’s taser. Throughout the scuffle, which was captured on Kunovich’s body cam, Aguilar Méndez can be heard screaming for his family. Toward the end of the altercation, the officers found a small pocket knife in Aguilar Méndez's pocket, which they apprehended after they handcuffed him.

Shortly after the six-minute scuffle ended, when Aguilar Méndez was handcuffed and on the ground, Kunovich suddenly collapsed. At a nearby hospital, the officer died. Medical examiners noted that Kunovich, who had gone into cardiac arrest, died of natural causes; however, a then-shackled and restrained Aguilar Méndez was charged with aggravated manslaughter of an officer and resisting an officer with violence. The case has stunned immigrant communities and legal scholars alike, many calling the charges racially motivated

The outrageous charges against Aguilar Méndez are the latest examples of the criminalization of brown immigrants. Kunovich’s engagement with the teenager was racist from the moment he as an officer deemed Aguilar Méndez suspicious for merely existing as himself in public. Aguilar Méndez's inability to understand or speak English was considered reason enough to escalate the situation with police force. But language barriers do not warrant violence, ever, especially from government workers who have been hired to protect and serve all people. I can’t imagine the terror Aguilar Méndez must have felt not being able to express himself while being tackled by three police officers, tased several times, and forced into handcuffs — all for eating in a parking lot while brown. 

Even after the unwarranted, racially motivated police stop, Aguilar Méndez's Indigeneity continues to be criminalized. The idea that Aguilar Méndez killed Kunovich is not only ludicrous; it also indicates how white U.S. society perceives brownness as a fatal danger, even from far away. There is evidence — body cam footage and medical reports — that shows that Aguilar Méndez was handcuffed and immobilized when Kunovich went into cardiac arrest. The manslaughter charges against Aguilar Méndez border on the magic Native American stereotype, implying that a young Indigenous man was able to kill a policeman through sorcery. Is Aguilar Méndez so dangerous that he was able to kill Kunovich without even touching him? Are the charges against Aguilar Méndez implying that he has magical powers to kill a police officer while under arrest and in the company of two other policemen? Are victims of police brutality responsible for the emotional stress of the officers attacking them? 

The St. John County Sheriff's Office and the State's Attorney's Office of the 7th Judicial Circuit of Florida apparently think so. While Circuit Judge R. Lee Smith ruled in December that Aguilar Méndez is incompetent to proceed to trial because he doesn’t understand English or Spanish and is unable to understand the criminal justice system, the controversial charges of resisting arrest with violence and aggravated manslaughter of a law enforcement officer still stand.

“He couldn’t understand the difference between being guilty, pleading guilty, or being found guilty, and those are very different concepts, he couldn’t understand that," forensic psychologist Dr. Yenys Castillo told the court. "He couldn’t understand what the potential penalties are or … the legal system.” Still, Aguilar Méndez remains detained without bail, which will be the subject of an upcoming hearing. 

Currently, Aguilar Méndez is going through competency-based training at the Volusia County jail, and despite two experts attesting that the young man does not have any mental illnesses, the judge still ordered Aguilar Méndez to receive prescribed psychiatric medications. Within 60 days, the judge will determine if Aguilar Méndez is capable enough to learn what's needed to go to trial. 

There is no defensible reason to keep Aguilar Méndez detained without bail, to keep the charges against him, and to drug him while incarcerated. Giving psychiatric medication to someone who has been deemed incompetent to understand what is happening around him is both dangerous and a violation of his bodily autonomy. 

More than 440,000 people agree. A Change.org petition, started by Mariana Blanco, is  demanding  Aguilar Méndez's immediate release and the dropping of all charges against him. In less than a week, it has already almost reached its 500,000 signature target.

“If Virgilio is convicted and sentenced to prison for this incident, it will create an extremely dangerous precedent in this country,” the petition reads. “Because if a police officer dies from a heart attack during a police-citizen encounter, anyone in this country can be charged, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison for that officer’s death. It is not a crime to stand outside your place of residence at any given time.”