Parents of Joel Acevedo, Ernest Lacy come together for comfort and to ask for police accountability
Every Sunday, Maribel and Jose Acevedo gathered their extended family for dinner and games. Their son Joel often helped Maribel cook. Sometimes he would take pictures of her creations, posting them to Snapchat and claiming he’d made them himself.
“He always had a joke; he always had his bright smile,” Maribel recalled.
She hasn’t put together a family dinner since April 19, the day Joel, 25, suffered the injury that would ultimately kill him: A chokehold by off-duty Milwaukee police officer Michael Mattioli. But last week, Maribel made Joel’s favorite dish, beef stew, and shared it with the family of Ernest Lacy, who died at the hands of Milwaukee police years before Joel was born.
Mattioli, who has since resigned, has been charged with first-degree reckless homicide in connection with Acevedo’s death. A trial date has not yet been set.
Lacy, 22, died in the back of a police van in 1981 after being detained for a rape he didn’t commit. Then-District Attorney E. Michael McCann issued charges of misconduct in public office against the officers, but a judge dismissed them, saying the statute didn’t apply to officers who neglect to provide first aid.
Lacy’s family, who successfully lobbied for a 1983 law that makes it a crime for police to fail to render aid to people in custody, recently joined Milwaukee’s Black Lives Matter protests. That’s where Maribel and Jose Acevedo met them.
The Acevedos, in their first sit-down interview since their son’s death, said they and the Lacys share not only grief over their sons’ deaths but also a feeling that not enough has been done to hold police accountable during the four decades between Ernest’s death and Joel’s.
They’re frustrated that the two men who were with Mattioli and Acevedo during the altercation that led to his death haven’t been charged. They also think Mattioli is receiving special treatment — including his freedom on $50,000 bail — because he was employed as a police officer.
“The police need more thorough discipline, assessments and drug tests,” Maribel Acevedo said. “These officers have complaints, and they’re not being disciplined.”
They’ve leaned on their faith, hoping Mattioli will one day take responsibility for Joel’s death.
“My prayer is that Mattioli will have some remorse,” Maribel said. “Because he has no remorse. No remorse for my son’s life.”
Taking care of animals and family
Joel’s parents described him a homebody who loved spending time with his family and his pets. When his sister teased him about the fact that he still lived with his parents, they said, his response came with a smile: “I’m going to live with Mom and Dad forever! I’ll be the one taking care of them when they get old.”
Joel already had spent time caring for his mother, who suffered for years with chronic pain and fibromyalgia.
“He always checked up on me and gave me my meds, made sure I was eating,” she said.
Joel trained a macaw named Ernie to hop up the stairs and check on his mother when he wasn’t home.
“Hello!” Ernie would call. “Pretty bird!”
Maribel would cuddle the bird and feed him french fries as he kept her company.
“It was my therapy,” she said. Ernie was one of many birds Joel raised from the time he was 6 or 7. The first was a blue parakeet, which immediately jumped onto his finger in the store and stood calmly as the boy walked to the checkout. For another bird, Joel built a perch on a remote control car and drove him around the patio.
Another mother who lost a son
The Saturday before he died, Joel worked with his father to decorate a spear that he joked about using to fight COVID-19. He cooked Italian beef and his mom cut his hair. Then he went to Mattioli’s house.
According to a criminal complaint, Mattioli told investigators he put Acevedo in a chokehold for 10 minutes during a fight the next morning but didn’t think he applied enough pressure to kill him.
At first, Maribel and Jose didn’t realize Joel hadn’t come home. They figured he was asleep, but when they checked, he wasn’t in his room. By the time their daughter arrived early that afternoon for Sunday dinner, Jose was calling hospitals.
After being initially barred from their son’s hospital room because of the pandemic, Maribel and Jose eventually were able to go in. Worship music was playing — Maribel had asked a nurse to put it on, hoping it would soothe her son.
“I held him and kissed him and he closed his eyes,” his mother said. “I thank God for that experience.”
Jose promised they would be back, but Joel died before they could return.
The grieving parents donated their son’s heart to a man in need of a transplant. Afterward, they received a package containing Joel’s final electrocardiogram report, his handprint and a hand-knit blanket. The blanket, Maribel was told, was made by another mother who’d lost a son.
Another mother like her. Another mother like Myrtle Lacy.
After Sunday dinner with the Lacy family, Maribel showed Joel’s room to Myrtle. As they stood there, Myrtle told her Ernest would often fall asleep on the couch. If she woke up at night, she always made sure to cover him so he wouldn’t get cold. The night he died, she went to the living room to tuck him in, but Ernest wasn’t there.
As she listened to Myrtle, Maribel decided to give her the blanket.
“I knew in my heart that blanket was meant for her,” Maribel said.
She wiped away tears as she relayed the story.
“It’s a journey,” she said, “I try to overlook the ugliness and the evilness of what happened to my son and see the good. I’ve met great people in the midst of it. It’s just a day-to-day process, an incredible journey.”
Contact Gina Barton at (414) 2242125 or gbarton@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @writerbarton.