Man shot by cop while fleeing mall gets prison
A man who was shot by an Orlando police officer in November while attempting to flee authorities in a stolen car was sentenced last month to five years in prison, court records show.
Bacilio Martinez, 25, was adjudicated guilty June 20 as part of a plea deal on charges of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer with a deadly weapon, fleeing or attempting to elude a law enforcement officer and grand theft of a motor vehicle.
Judge John Marshall Kest sentenced Martinez that day to five years in state prison on each count, which Martinez will serve simultaneously.
Martinez, who initially told police his name was Joselito Gonzalez, was arrested Nov. 21 after he was tracked by police in a stolen car to a shopping plaza on University Boulevard, where he was surrounded at gunpoint by officers.
Martinez had stolen the car earlier that day while on a test drive, police said. When authorities found him backed into a parking spot in front of a day spa at the plaza, they boxed him in and ordered him to put his hand up. Martinez, who later said he was confused and trying to flee, reversed the car into the spa before driving past the officers, out of the plaza and toward Lake Nona, where he crashed into a law-enforcement vehicle and an elderly couple’s car near State Road 417.
As he peeled out of the plaza, he was shot by Orlando police Officer Alex Chase. Body camera video of the shooting showed Chase step around to the driver side of the car after Martinez reversed into the day spa and shoot through the window as Martinez pulled forward.
The shooting was investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which has submitted its findings to the State Attorney’s Office, FDLE spokeswoman Angela Starke said. The State Attorney’s Office will decide if any criminal charges will be filed against Chase.
A separate OPD investigation will take place to determine if Chase violated any department policies, including one that generally prohibits officers from firing into moving vehicles.
Orlando police Chief Orlando Rolón said in November Martinez “put a lot of people in danger when he chose to do what he did here … knowing that he had really no way out, but yet chose to drive towards our officers.”
Martinez said in a May interview he was trying “to evade potentially being shot. At no point
was anybody in front of me.”
Before Martinez agreed to the plea deal, records show his attorney, Nina Patterson, filed a motion in June to dismiss the charge of aggravated assault and battery against a law enforcement officer, which Martinez has said was added “to justify the shooting.”
In the motion, Patterson argued it was “unreasonable that Officer Chase was in fear of his life” because he “was never forced to move in order to avoid being hit, he only moved in order to maintain his position and aim at [Martinez]’s chest as he fired into the vehicle.”
In a response to the motion, prosecutors said Chase “was in fear of his life and safety of others” when Martinez drove toward him, and that Martinez’s “turning of the vehicle’s wheels toward Officer Chase suggest his intention to hit Officer Chase.”
Kest did not rule on the motion, records show.