A father and husband who spent nearly seven years in a coma after he was sucker-punched by a stranger on a New York City street has died -- and his heartbroken family is as devastated by the perceived lack of justice as his loss.
Domingo Tapia had been hospitalized, unresponsive, since he was randomly socked in the face as he rode his bike in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in June 2017. The father of two was attacked on Fulton Street, near Albany Avenue, as he rode home from his grocery store job and suffered a fractured skull.
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Tapia was put in a medically induced coma. He was 38 years old at the time. His two boys were 5 and 7. Now, memories by their father's hospital bed are all they have left of him.
"We woke up and our mom says that our dad didn't make it," Pedro Tapia, now 13, said as he described learning the gut-wrenching news. He said he was "sad" about it, as was his now 11-year-old brother Jose.
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The boys' mother, Esther Diaz, said through a translator that her husband had been suffering extensively and she knows he is in a better place. The housekeeper also said Tapia's absence from their family has been challenging.
"It's been a struggle, dealing with the kids," Diaz said through a translator.
She's had to work overtime, and has faced a litany of other struggles, since that punch ripped Tapia from their lives.
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Now, Diaz and her family wish only for Gary Anderson, the man convicted in the punch that put Tapia in the hospital, to be charged with his murder. A translator said Anderson was convicted of misdemeanor assault in the case and sentenced to three years, though a friend of the family says he walked out of jail in six months.
The Brooklyn district attorney's office didn't immediately respond to a request about whether it would pursue upgraded charges against Anderson, given the tragic development.
Under New York law, it is nearly impossible for prosecutors to charge a defendant who throws a deadly or seriously-injuring punch with harsher crimes than the one for which Anderson served time. Lawmakers to date haven't been successful in trying to close the legal loophole that allows for it, which Tapia's friends and family say is not fair.
Tapia's family is applying with the Mexican consulate for financial aid to help pay for his funeral.
