Power Rangers Actor Released Without Criminal Charges In Roommate’s Death By Sword Stabbing

Last weekend we reported the unfortunate news that Ricardo Medina, Jr., who played Red Wild Force Ranger Cole Evans on Power Rangers Wild Force and returned to the franchise in 2011 to play Deker in Power Rangers Samurai, had been arrested in the stabbing death of his roommate, Joshua Sutter. He had allegedly stabbed Sutter with a sword during an argument when the roommate had reportedly forced his way into Medina’s bedroom after Medina and his girlfriend had closed the door. Later we learned the door was also locked, as Vulture quotes from Medina’s attorney:

“It is a self-defense case,” Allen Bell, Medina’s attorney, told ABC7. “You have an individual here that was the victim of a beating in the kitchen area before he went to the bedroom and closed and locked the door in order to secure himself from any continuing violence.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, prosecutors for the L.A. County DA’s office declined to file charges, although they have asked sheriff’s investigators for more investigation. Medina’s $1 million bail was dropped and he was released from jail yesterday afternoon. It appears — as long as all the physical evidence and eyewitness testimony lines up — that the case will be ruled self defense.

It’s a sad story all around. Anyone who’s had roommates probably remembers a time you wanted to fist fight with them, or when one of them was trying to fight you and you didn’t want any part of it. That this argument ended in an apparently unintentional death is just terrible. I’ll refrain from making any tasteless jokes about how former stripper Ricardo Medina was… *sunglasses* stripped of the charges. Oh crap, that counts as making the joke, doesn’t it? This is awkward.

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