14 DAY TRIAL // A teenager has died while being pursued by police for painting graffiti on the side of a building. Sources say that Israel Hernandez-Llach was stopped with a Taser gun.
“During the foot pursuit, the subject encountered officers face to face ... and ignored officers' commands to stop,” Miami Beach Police Department Chief Raymond Martinez details in a statement relayed by New York Daily News.
“In order to affect (sic) his arrest, an officer deployed his conducted electrical weapon (TASER),” Martinez explains.
17-year-old Hernandez-Llach was a senior in high-school and an art director for a modeling agency.
“He was such a talented artist and had a special gift worth developing,” his employer Heather Bozzone describes.
His friend, Thiago Souza, was with him when he died. He described writing on a building that used to house a McDonald's. When police turned up they started chasing them and eventually caught up to them.
“I didn’t even know they fired a Taser. I thought they just had him down and he was arrested and was just tired,” Souza says.
The teen was arrested and pinned to the floor. By the time he hit the ground, he had stopped moving.
“His body was on the floor like motionless, and they were all just laughing,” Souza describes.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. [...] I asked the cops ‘what happened to my friend?’ then they detained me and my other friend and that’s when I heard one of the cops make nasty remarks,” he says.
When a Miami Beach Fire Rescue arrived to the scene the artist was transported to Mount Sinai Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead.
“That made me feel terrible inside. [...] These cops are gruesome, and they don't really care,” adds friend Felix Hernandez, who was also present that night.