'He was a great man': Late officer's son in dismissed St. Johns case defends his legacy

The late Michael Kunovich served 26 years with the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office with distinction. He piled up promotions and accolades doing what he loved, helping the community and still being "Dad." After a fateful final shift, his character and legacy have been under attack.

His oldest son, 21-year-old Michael Kunovich Jr., wants to show “the good side of him that not many people are seeing right now, and just say what he was: He was a great man, he really was.”

He said he understands and supports the State Attorney's Office's decision Friday to dismiss the case against Virgilio Aguilar Mendez, who told detectives he feared being deported back to Guatemala when he resisted being searched by the 52-year-old Kunovich leading to his heart attack.

"It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this case isn’t exactly popular in the public consciousness at the moment," Kunovich Jr. said from the University of Central Florida, where he is majoring in international global studies with a minor in intelligence and national security. "What’s made the situation harder … it’s not exactly great to see people discussing your father in such a negative light.”

He said he's seen some of the officer-worn body camera footage that has fueled the fire about his actions.

"I’ve probably seen as much as the public has seen," he said Sunday. "I could if I want to, but I feel like it would be kind of tough to watch the whole thing. I don’t know how to start with this. People look at it and say well he was profiling, he was being mean to him, or the tone of his voice, he didn’t need to talk to him like that. Police officers have a very stressful and dangerous job. … They have to be skeptical because their life is on the line. I can’t tell you how many times my dad has run into situations when he’s had to talk to suspicious persons, and he’s had to be on high alert because this could be the last person he talks to."

He said he's read the reports and talked with deputies who were there, and he stands by what the Sheriff’s Office says about people needing to comply in those situations.

"No matter if you don’t speak English or not, stopping for the police is a pretty universal thing," Kunovich Jr. said. "People know what police officers are."

He said his father is not the type of person he’s being portrayed as because of this incident.

“I understand that side has their opinion, and they’re entitled to it. I can’t agree with it, because it’s my father," he said. "I feel like I have a sense of duty to not only defend his character but defend his name because I grew up with him. He is not what defense attorneys and what these support groups are making him out to be, and that’s just a lie, it really is.”

He said his father was all about doing good.

"It’s why he got into law enforcement, he loved helping everybody," he said. "… The best way to describe it is how he taught my brother [16-year-old Max] and I growing up. He always told us you always hold doors open for people, you always say please, thank you. You always help others and you always do what you can in order to make the world a better place around you. And he was very adamant about that. He was an astounding father growing up.”

Kunovich Jr. recounted several stories about the type of man his father was.

“Recently before he passed he was telling me he and his shift had to resuscitate an infant that was choking severely," his son said. "He was doing mini compressions on the infant’s chest because it was suffocating. Eventually, they managed to bring the baby back.”

He said people he arrested and served their time would walk up to him and thank him. "'It sounds crazy, but thank you for arresting me. It gave me a reality check, it got me out of a bad place I was in,'” they would say.

While on the SWAT team, “There was one story he told me that kind of stuck with me, where he was called to a scene where a mentally ill son had attacked his father with a sword. He showed up and the son basically barricaded himself in the bathroom and was hiding in the shower. Instead of going in there and discharging his weapon, he took his Taser, and back then the stun guns had a little red dot laser pointer on it, and he used it, bounced it off a mirror on his chest. When the suspect saw it on his chest, he dropped the sword and surrendered. So he solved that situation as non-violently as he could.”

Kunovich Jr. said his father worked some hard shifts in some tough neighborhoods.

"Growing up we were always afraid of getting that phone call like something’s happened to your dad, we need you to get to the hospital right now," he said. "That was always a fear and that was always a worry we had growing up.”

But he knew how to separate his work life from his home and family.

"When he came home, he would kind of flip the switch and be Dad, and wouldn’t really be Officer Kunovich," his son said.

He also tried to shield his sons from some of things he saw and didn't want them to become a police officer.

"He always told me police work is a thankless job, and you’re never going to get anything out of it except that the fact that you in your own heart realize you’re making the community a better place,” Kunovich Jr. said.

As the interview concluded, he reiterated what he had begun with: "I feel like I should get the word out as much as possible that he really was a good man. You don’t have to look hard to see that."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Son of late St. Johns County officer speaks out after case dismissed