Victim Hacked To Death With An Axe After Being Mistaken For A Burglar
March 23, 2011 at 4:53 am by Morbid
RIO LINDA, CA - Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A man has been charged with murder after using an axe on a man he incorrectly suspected of burglarizing his home.
When 29-year-old Steven Zinda arrived home in the early Sunday morning, his house was in the process of being burglarized. The intruder fled and Zinda took off after him wielding an axe.
At the same time, 20-year-old David Valdez was also having some bad luck after getting his SUV stuck in a ditch across the street from Valdez’s home while on the way home from a party. He was standing outside of his vehicle using his cell phone to call his girlfriend and his mother letting them know he would be home as soon as his friends showed up to help him.
That’s when he was approached by the axe-wielding Zinda and did like most of us would do if a strange, agitated man wielding an axe started coming towards you on an empty street at four in the morning — Valdez ran like hell. Unfortunately, Zinda caught up to him a quarter mile later and struck him with the axe he was carrying. Zinda returned home and called 911, explaining he had just injured a burglar.
Paramedics arrived on the scene and located Valdez’s's lifeless body, dead from “suffered trauma to his head and upper body.”
Zinda has been charged with murder and is being held in jail without bail. He does not have a criminal history and police say that drugs or alcohol did not play a role in Zinda’s actions. They also say they were unable to establish a connection between Valdez and the attempted robbery at Zinda’s residence.
I believe in the use of deadly force if you feel your life is in danger…but Zinda’s actions were ridiculous.
Tags: Axe, Burglary, California, Crime, Murder
