Cadesha Michelle Bishop may seriously want to explore a plea deal. According to the Associated Press, the 25-year-old woman has been charged with murder after an elderly man who she shoved off a Las Vegas bus after he told her to stop abusing other bus riders and to be civil. A videotape shows Bishop matter-of-factly pushing 74-year-old Serge Fournier out a door and head first into the pavement.
Bishop was allegedly shouting profanities at other people before Fournier told her Security camera footage from March 21 shows Cadesha Michelle Bishop getting into an altercation with 74-year-old Serge Fournier, who had reportedly asked her to “be nicer” to other passengers on the bus. Witnesses told authorities that the woman got on the bus with her son and began shouting profanities at other people.
A witness said that the pushing was “with enough force that he never touched any of the steps.”
Fournier went to a hospital with a bleeding injury to the head. One month later, he died at a hospice from complications of blunt force torso injuries. When reporters contacted the father of her son, he said that he separated from Bishop because she was simply “too violent.”
She was previously convicted twice in 2012 and 2013 of domestic violence misdemeanors. She was released on bond.
Her defense will obviously be a lack of intent to injure. She charging sheet says “Open Murder e/vop” which means open murder victim older person. I could not find a lot on that charge but it does qualify for first degree murder:
NRS 200.030 Degrees of murder; penalties.
1. Murder of the first degree is murder which is:
. . .
(b) Committed in the perpetration or attempted perpetration . . . child abuse or abuse of an older person or vulnerable person pursuant to NRS 200.5099.
There is no question that shoving an elderly man down into the concrete from a bus is abuse of an older person. Given the videotape, the only defenses would be an alternative cause for the death or the lack of true intent to kill (as opposed to abuse).