After a late lunch with his wife in West Hollywood, Miguel Angel Aguilar got in his white convertible 1959 Chevrolet Impala and headed home to Bel-Air. He didn’t notice the gray Acura sedan that tailed him through rush-hour traffic on Sunset Boulevard.
In the Acura were four young men who’d driven from Oakland to Los Angeles in September 2024 for the “express purpose” of robbing people, a prosecutor said in court Tuesday. They had allegedly robbed a man of his diamond bracelet and necklace the day before they spotted Aguilar dining at Bossa Nova, a Brazilian restaurant on Sunset Boulevard.
Aguilar, 43, had amassed a sizable following as an influencer on Instagram and YouTube, where he spoke of overcoming poverty and addiction before creating a chain of gyms called Self Made Training Facility. In the back of his Impala, he put up a sign that read “SLF MDE.”
At a preliminary hearing on Tuesday, Los Angeles Police Department detectives displayed photographs of the Impala sitting in traffic around 4 p.m. on Sept. 13, 2024.
“If I may say so, it was cherried out,” Det. Charles Moreno testified of Aguilar’s car. “It had custom paint. It was in great condition. If I was a car collector, I’d want that car.”
Aguilar drove toward his home on Thurston Circle, where a neighbor’s camera showed the Impala cruise down the quiet residential street, music blaring. Just behind it was the gray Acura with tinted windows. A few seconds elapsed after the cars passed out of frame. Then muffled shouting could be heard, followed by two shots in quick succession.
LAPD Det. Frank Flores testified he interviewed Aguilar’s wife, who said when her husband stopped the Impala outside the garage, she saw four or five masked, armed men coming up the driveway. They demanded Aguilar and his wife hand over their watches.
Aguilar, who had a permit to carry a concealed firearm, drew his gun, Flores testified. He said the wife wasn’t sure who shot first, but both Aguilar and one of the robbers fired a single shot. Aguilar fell back in the Impala with a gunshot wound in his neck. His assailants fled in the Acura.
Surveillance footage showed the car careen through a red light in Culver City on the way to Southern California Hospital. As it turned left into a parking lot, the Acura crashed into an oncoming car. Two men dragged a third into the emergency room and laid him on the floor, according to footage shown in court. Jason Melara stood back and watched nurses try to revive his older brother Mario Melara, whom Aguilar had shot in the back, authorities said.
Jason Melara ran out of the hospital and jogged through traffic on Culver Boulevard with two men, whom police later identified as Daymonee Johnson and Mahki Taylor. The three wandered downtown Culver City, seemingly unsure of where to go. At one point, Melara and Taylor sat next to each other on a staircase, and Taylor pantomimed firing a gun with his hands, Det. Nellie Knight testified.
A month later, LAPD detectives arrested Melara, Taylor and Johnson in Oakland. Booked in the Berkeley city jail, Taylor admitted to a police informant that he shot Aguilar, but said he only pulled the trigger after Aguilar shot Mario Melara, who was trying to run away, Flores testified. According to the detective, Taylor said his unregistered ghost gun jammed after he shot Aguilar.
Aguilar lived for three months before he died on Dec. 21, 2024. Los Angeles County prosecutors charged Jason Melara, Taylor and Johnson not only with his murder, but also the killing of Mario Melara under the theory that his death was provoked by the armed robbery of Aguilar.
Jason Melara’s attorney, Andrew Stein, asked the two murder charges be dismissed, telling Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe there was no evidence his client pointed a gun at Aguilar. He conceded that Melara and the others “drove 500 miles to commit a crime wave here in Los Angeles,” but said the authorities couldn’t prove his client’s exact role in the robbery.
“It’s a tragedy for everybody involved,” Stein said.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Eric Siddall said Melara, Taylor and Johnson created an “atmosphere of death” when they decided to take Aguilar’s property at gunpoint.
“The victim was at home, the threshold of his home, with his wife when he was ambushed,” Siddall said. “The defendants should have known there would be a lethal response.”
Rappe ruled he’d seen enough evidence for Melara, Taylor and Johnson to stand trial on charges of robbery, assault and murder.
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