A teenager who said he had to stab another teen in a late-night fight for his life in North Little Rock was cleared of wrongdoing by a Pulaski County jury on Thursday.
Prosecutors had charged Uriel Zirondara Ruiz of Little Rock with first-degree battery and aggravated robbery over accusations that he had attacked another teenager, Wilson Herrera, during a holdup attempt.
The robbery attempt occurred while the two teens were in a car in front of Herrera's North Schaer Street home in April.
After a night of drinking beer together, Ruiz demanded Herrera's cash at knife-point after seeing Herrera collect a debt from a friend, according to the police account of events.
Stabbed four times, Herrera was able to crawl out of the car and into the house while his father and brothers held Ruiz, then 17, for police, who arrested him on the spot. The first officer on the scene said he thought Herrera, then 19, was dead, until the man opened his eyes and was able to speak while drifting in and out of consciousness.
Jurors deliberated about two hours before delivering their acquittal verdict to Circuit Judge Barry Sims after defense attorney Leonardo Monterrey flipped the script at trial.
Monterrey told jurors that Ruiz was the real victim, first by a drunken Herrera in an unprovoked attack, next by Herrera's family, who cooked up a plan to frame the 17-year-old, and then by police, who were too quickly satisfied to ask deeper questions of such an easy arrest.
"He's not this monster they want you to think he is," Monterrey said in his closing argument. "[Herrera] is not the victim. This young man is the victim."
To emphasize his point over the course of the two-day trial, the lawyer repeatedly showed jurors a super-sized photograph of Ruiz's battered and bruised face and scratched and marked torso. He also had Ruiz lift his shirt on the witness stand to show off his scars. Monterrey called on jurors to act as "quality control" for police and clear his client's name.
"He was fighting for his life! Look at this picture," Monterrey told jurors while describing Herrera's injuries as exaggerated. "I can't show it to you enough."
Jailed since his arrest that night Ruiz, now 18, spent about an hour on the stand Thursday describing his version of events.
He said that although both teens worked in the kitchen at the Courtyard by Marriott in North Little Rock -- Ruiz as a dishwasher and Herrera as a cook -- they barely knew each other and had never spoken before that night.
Ruiz said that when Herrera invited him to hang out and drink beer after work, about 12:30 a.m., he went along, despite a co-worker's warning that Herrera was known to get violent when he was drinking.
Ruiz testified that he'd never done anything like that before since he had to rely on his mother to take him to and from work. But Herrera promised him a ride home later, Ruiz said. Questioned about why he decided to stay out so late, while not telling his mother where he was, Ruiz chalked it up to his youth.
"I'm a teenager ... at a certain age, sometimes you do things that don't need to be done," he said.
The two young men bought an 18-pack of Corona beer, met up with a friend of Herrera's and sat in the car drinking for a while, then went driving around. But when Ruiz told Herrera he wanted to go home, the older teen at first ignored his requests, Ruiz told jurors.
When he kept on asking, Herrera said he could just sleep over at his home, Ruiz said.
The knife came out when he insisted that Herrera take him home, Ruiz said. By this time, the pair had been together more than four hours and were parked in front of the Herrera home.
Ruiz said he knew he had to fight for his life when Herrera put the blade to his face, paused, then nicked him under his left eye.
"That's when I started defending myself, wrestling in the car," he said. "As we're fighting, we're wrestling, and the only way I can get it [the knife] is to stab him."
Ruiz said he and Herrera were still struggling when the older teen's family members grabbed him, roughing him up and dragging him through the dirt.
Alerted to the arrival of police by the flashing lights of patrol cars, two of them discussed how they would accuse him of robbery to cover up what really happened, Ruiz said.
Prosecutors Matt Stauffer and Anna Catherine Cargile called on jurors to deliver a "common-sense" verdict of guilty. Stauffer reminded jurors that Herrera's family had called police and that they had been asleep when Herrera was being stabbed.
Herrera's brother had been startled awake by Herrera's car horn blaring, looked outside and saw the pair fighting in the car. The wounded Herrera had sounded the alarm by beating Ruiz's face against the steering wheel as he struggled to get away from the attacking teen, which accounts for Ruiz's injuries, Stauffer told jurors.
"He [Herrera] was stabbed four times, unprovoked! Why? Because he wouldn't give [Ruiz] the money and he wouldn't take him home," the prosecutor said.
Metro on 11/17/2018