He was toting a machete when a Miami-Dade cop shot him. Still, some neighbors have questions.

David Ovalle, Charles Rabin
·5 min read

After Arcadio Hernandez was wrongfully diagnosed with pink eye at a hospital, he suffered catastrophic brain damage when an aneurysm in his head burst in 2010. A civil jury in Pasco County later awarded him $13.2 million in damages.

A decade later, Hernandez is back in the hospital, this time, recovering from a volley of bullets fired by a Miami-Dade police officer during a confrontation outside his Kendall home.

New surveillance video, as well as interviews with a neighbor and law enforcement officials, shed new light on last Friday’s shooting — when the department claimed the 27-year-old Hernandez “charged towards” Miami-Dade Police Officer Juan Calderon while armed with a machete.

The video, taken from a neighbor’s surveillance system, doesn’t appear to show a full-steam charge, but rather Hernandez turning toward Calderon after being shot with a Taser stun gun by another officer. The neighbor told the Herald that Hernandez, who was partially paralyzed and dragged his leg when he walked, was blocked from going back inside his home.

“He turned back because he had nowhere to walk, they tasered him, he drops the machete and then he gets shot,” said the neighbor, who asked she not be identified for fear of retaliation.

But the video also shows that before the shooting, Calderon spent about three minutes backing up down the street, pleading with Hernandez — who appeared to be having a mental break while crying “God was with me” — to drop the weapon. “Drop the machete, I don’t want to shoot you,” Calderon can be heard saying.

Steadman Stahl, president of Miami-Dade County’s Police Benevolent Association, said Calderon tried to “de-escalate” a tense situation and was justified in ultimately shooting Hernandez because the Taser prongs had no effect on the man.

“That guy definitely took a stance and went after the officer. The body camera footage is clear. He was trying to talk him down. At some point he pulls the Taser prongs out [of his body]. It has no effect on him,” Stahl said. “There are people that have thresholds for pain that others don’t have. So the Taser is not an end-all.”

Calderon’s body-worn camera footage, which will show a clearer picture of the incident, has yet to be released.

Hernandez remains hospitalized at Kendall Regional Trauma Center in stable condition. He could face charges when he recovers, according to Miami-Dade Police.

The new details about the shooting at Hernandez’s home at 10800 SW 136th Ave. are emerging as national attention has again focused on police tactics in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Blake, shot several times in the back during a confrontation with police, remains hospitalized and the shooting has spurred protests and unrest in the small city south of Milwaukee.

It also follows months of protests around the nation sparked by the May death of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer fatally pressed his knee to the man’s neck during an arrest.

Arcadio Hernandez walks out of the courtroom during a morning recess in his 2013 civil trial in which he sought damages against Morton Plant North Bay Hospital, a physician and physician’s assistant, and the companies contracted to do work in the ER by the hospital. Hernandez claimed he was disabled because of a misdiagnosis at a hospital emergency room. According to court documents, Hernandez, then 17, was suffering severe pain in and around his eye and was diagnosed with conjunctivitis, commonly known as pink eye. Hernandez’s lawyer, Steven Deutsch, right, said Hernandez had a brain bleed and was permanently disabled as a result of the misdiagnosis.

As for Hernandez, his life had been marred by misfortune.

At age 17, Hernandez — suffering from pain around his eye — went to the Morton Plant North Bay Hospital in Pasco County. Medical staff diagnosed him with pink eye and gave him antibiotics. Months later, he had to undergo emergency surgery after the aneurysm burst, leaving him with permanent brain damages and physical injuries.

At trial, Hernandez testified that his memory was shot, that he suffers regular seizures and had lost the use of one of his hands.

Hernandez had lived in Miami-Dade’s The Crossings neighborhood for about a year, neighbors said. He was known to smoke cigarettes and sing outside, sometimes walking to a nearby Walgreens. Because of his physical disabilities, one neighbor always helped him take his trash cans out to the street for pickup.

“He wasn’t a threat. He wasn’t a bother to anybody,” said the neighbor whose video camera captured the shooting.

But Hernandez had gotten into arguments with a neighbor across the street over the family parking a car in the swale in front of his house, residents said.

A few days before the shooting, Miami-Dade police officers were called to Hernandez’s home. The department said it received a report that a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier had been threatened by someone with a machete. Hernandez was questioned but not arrested.

Then on Friday, just before 5 p.m., according to a Miami-Dade Police press release, “reports were received of a man armed with a machete walking along the street and threatening passersby.”

A law-enforcement source said that Hernandez had gone outside holding the machete and asked his neighbor to move the family’s car parked on his swale. The neighbor, Manuel Rivero, did move the car but the family called 911 because of the weapon, the source said.

Rivero declined to comment. “We already told the police everything that happened,” he said before hanging up on a reporter.

The neighbor who provided the video to the Herald said police have miscast what happened.

“Was he threatening bystanders? Was he threatening neighbors? No, he wasn’t,” she said.

Either way, Hernandez was still standing outside his house holding the machete when Officer Calderon arrived.

The video shows Calderon’s patrol car pull up, lights flashing. “Drop the f***king machete,” he says as he immediately encounters Calderon outside.

“God is with me,” Hernandez repeats.

Calderon’s tone lowers. “Drop the machete,” he says. “What’s your name? Nice to meet you, I’m Felipe.”

The two keep talking in Spanish, as Calderon continues backing up, and Hernandez walks forward toward him. “Por favor, Arcadio,” the officer says.

The two disappear off screen for a couple more minutes. Then, as Hernandez is seen walking back toward his home, another police car rushes up and another officer gets out. Blocked from view by the vehicle, he appears to immediately shoot his Taser at Hernandez. Calderon immediately fired two shots, then a third as the man falls to the ground.

The police shooting is being investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office will ultimately decide whether the officer was justified in shooting his gun at Hernandez.