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The family of an elderly Los Angeles couple viciously attacked in a McDonald’s drive-thru is seeking justice after the brutal assault ultimately left the wife brain-dead, all while the alleged attacker was reportedly freed without bail.
Jose Juan Rangel Hernandez, 74, and Maria Guadalupe Vargas Luna, 58, were at the restaurant chain in March when a homeless man punched Hernandez in the face through his car door window, the family says.
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Vargas Luna, who is partially blind, got out to help her husband when the perpetrator reportedly kept beating him on the ground. During the incident, Vargas Luna fell to the ground and hit her head. While being transported to the hospital, she suffered a heart attack.
“We’re all devastated because my father is beside himself, and he says he doesn’t want to keep living without her because she was his world,” Hernandez’s daughter, Veronica Rangel, told “Fox & Friends First” on Thursday. “They’ve been married for 30 years, and all she did was give up her life trying to defend him, and my dad feels guilty. He feels sad. He feels angry. He feels like he’s losing his life partner, his best friend, for something that should never have happened.”
After Vargas Luna was released from her initial hospital stay, she experienced complications with a breathing and feeding tube, FOX 11 reported. She had another heart attack after being released, but paramedics were unable to get her medical aid quickly enough, and she went too long without oxygen.
Doctors have recommended the family take her off life support since she no longer has brain activity.
Maria Guadalupe Vargas Luna suffered two heart attacks after trying to help her husband when the pair were assaulted at a Los Angeles McDonald’s in March. She is now brain-dead and doctors are recommending she be taken off life support. (‘Fox & Friends First’ screengrab)
Now, the accused assailant is reportedly back on the streets after he was released without bail.
Rangel told co-host Todd Piro the alleged attacker was only going to be charged with a misdemeanor assault against her father, but after the media circulated the story, the charges could include a felony assault against her stepmother.
But Rangel argued that isn’t enough since the attack robbed Vargas Luna of her life.
“Since the news [has] caught wind of this, and now that you guys are helping us, now she’s [the prosecutor] saying she’s going to charge him with a felony assault against her, but that’s it,” she said. “Even though she’s technically dead because of what this man did, she still doesn’t want to press any harsher punishment against him, and he was released two days after he got arrested on OR. And we have court tomorrow, like you said, and we’re more than sure that he’s not going to show up.”
Hernandez’s grandson, William Cantabrana, also joined “Fox & Friends First” to discuss what he would like to see happen as his family continues to seek justice for Vargas Luna.
“To me, justice looks like something that has to be done,” Cantabrana said Thursday. “It was essentially just a slap on the wrist. This man just feels like I guess he could just do whatever he wants, and the cops, even… when everything first went down [at] McDonald’s, they asked my grandpa, like, ‘Oh, do you want to press charges? Like, you’re going to have to go to court, and you’re going to have to… see this through… like, are you sure you want to go to the trouble?’ And my grandpa was adamant, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’”
“It was kind of like they were trying to be like, ‘Hey, like, do you really want to? Because at this point, like why?’ It’s like they were trying to make it seem like… Don’t go for it… Let it go. To me that’s just not right.”
Bailee Hill is an associate editor with Fox News Digital. Story ideas can be sent to bailee.hill@fox.com
