Overview
- A Los Angeles County judge found enough evidence last week to send Mahki Taylor, Daymonee Johnson and Jason Melara to trial on murder and related counts, and the three remain jailed without bail pending arraignment.
- Prosecutors say the men traveled from Oakland to Los Angeles and followed Miguel Angel Aguilar from a Sunset Boulevard restaurant to his Bel Air home, where an attempted robbery turned into a shootout on Sept. 13, 2024.
- Court testimony and evidence shown at the preliminary hearing include surveillance video, LAPD detective testimony and an informant-linked jailhouse statement attributed to Taylor that prosecutors say tied him to firing a gun.
- The charges allege special circumstances tied to an attempted robbery, a theory that would let prosecutors seek life terms and would hold the defendants responsible for the death of an alleged accomplice despite disputed accounts of who fired first.
- Aguilar, a gym owner and fitness influencer who died Dec. 21, 2024 after months in the hospital, has drawn public interest to the case and the coming trial will test contested facts about individual roles and the sequence of the shooting.