COUNTERPUNCH
Jury weighs if fatal blow was self-defense
A Queens jury heard two starkly different takes Wednesday on the fatal onepunch knockout of a drunken out-of-towner, with prosecutors and the defense divided over whether it was a crime or simply self-defense.
Jamil Jones, an assistant basketball coach at Wake Forest University, only crossed paths with Sandor Szabo in August 2018 because the Florida resident smashed the windshield of Jones’ BMW SUV following a long night of drinking, defense attorney Christopher Renfroe told the jury in his closing argument.
Szabo, 35, “was the aggressor that night,” Renfroe said. “He was drunk. He was five times the legal limit,” with a blood-alcohol level of 0.40.
Jones, who was driving with his fiancée, was charged with assault in the fatal incident and would face a maximum of one year in prison if convicted.
Queens Criminal Court Judge Joanne Watters told the jury that if Jones’ punch was to be considered selfdefense, he had to believe Szabo was about to use physical force against him. The panel finished its first day of deliberations without reaching a verdict.
Szabo, in town for his stepsister’s wedding, was seen stumbling on the streets of Long Island City and was involved in two fights before his deadly run-in with Jones, according to the defense lawyer.
But Assistant District Attorney Kirk Sendlein asserted that an enraged Jones, 38, overreacted and punched the 5-foot-10 Szabo with such force that the victim’s brain stem was detached from his brain.
“It wasn’t about protection,” said Sendlein. “It was about payback. You’re going to tell me that … he actually thought that drunk man posed a threat to him? That physical harm was necessary? That a conversation couldn’t even cover it?
“If he was trying to protect anything that night, it was his image of himself in front of his fiancée.”
A surveillance video captured the athletic, 6-foot-5 Jones running at Szabo, a Boca Raton, Fla., resident, before setting his feet and laying out the other man with a single right hand to the face.
“Just because you’re mad doesn’t give you permission to punch somebody’s lights out,” said Sendlein. As Jones walks back to his car, the dying Szabo “was lying there with blood coming out of his mouth, blood coming out of his ears, and he was not moving,” the prosecutor added.