The local cable news affiliate FOX 10 has reported on a man named Zsolt Császár dying of stab wounds in an apartment in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday, 21 October. The Hungarian tabloid paper Blikk broke the news in Hungary that the sadly deceased
Mr Császár was the son of Prof Dr Emőke Bagdy, a famous Hungarian clinical psychologist and psychotherapist.
According to local reports, the 53-year-old Császár was visiting one of his friends at the apartment in Phoenix. Unfortunately for him, his friend’s 18-year-old brother was also living there, subleasing the apartment. The man has since been taken into custody, assigned a $1 million cash-only bond (which he evidently could not make), and charged with second-degree murder.
Yaaliyah Ezekiel Jackson is not disputing having stabbed Császár to death, however, he is claiming self-defence. According to his version of events, he got into a heated argument with the victim, which escalated to the point where he was in fear for his life and thus he had to stab him. While it was Jackson himself who called 911 for help, which is a fact that helps his case, that alone may be far from enough for him to get an acquittal or get his case dropped by the prosecutor.
‘Disparity of force’ is usually taken into account when adjudicating supposed self-defence cases in the US—and those facts are not favouring Jackson at all this time. Not only is he 35 years younger than his victim, but Császár has also been described by the police as ‘significantly smaller in size’ than Jackson. The suspect has also told investigators that he had not seen a weapon, or anything he could have reasonably conceived to be a weapon, in the Hungarian man’s hand. In that case, by grabbing a knife for a weapon of his own, he was most likely responding with deadly force to an attack of ordinary force (as in, shoves and punches, as even the suspect himself claimed), which is also violating a principle of justified self-defence.
From the Phoenix Police Department’s press release, we also learn that the deadly conflict supposedly all started with an issue as petty as Császár using the shower in the apartment, and then asking Jackson to wait for a bit before he packs away his cleaning products. PHXPD’s release also claims Jackson stabbed the victim three times in the kitchen with a large butcher knife, then the tussle continued in the bedroom, where Császár was stabbed ‘two or three’ more times.
The suspect, Yaaliyah Jackson, despite his young age, has been in trouble with the law quite a few times before. In fact, he was out on felony probation at the time he committed his alleged murder. This is another indicator of a larger problem, which is
liberal prosecutors being generous with bonds and release conditions for violent criminals since the Biden administration took office,
which has led to an increase in violent crime across major cities in the US.
Victim’s Mother Speaks Out
The victim’s mother, Emőke Bagdy, talked to the Hungarian paper Blikk, and shared exclusive information not published in the American media about the case—
she even called the local reports of the case ‘nonsense’. According to her, this was a case of ambush robbery.
His son, who was working as a theologian, was lured to the apartment, on the false premise of an event. She also claims that his car and cell phone were stolen; and that there was no tussle either, as his son was ‘a benevolent, helpful, deeply religious man. A slim, 1.70 m (5 foot 7), docile little man’.
Jackson is now charged with second-degree murder, which means that the prosecution believes his crime was not premeditated, but was decided then and there. However, if Bagdy’s version of events is correct, then that would constitute first-degree, premeditated murder, which carries even harsher sentences—Jackson would be likely sentenced to life in prison if convicted, or could even face the death penalty in the state of Arizona.
