Former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez is currently under police custody for his alleged involvement in a shooting in late February.
The reported incident happened in San Jose, California where Velasquez was accused of opening fire at a truck and going on an ‘11-mile high-speed chase.’ He was allegedly targeting a man who supposedly molested one of his relatives, but instead, hit and injured a different person.
Based on the details of the incident alone, many notable names within the MMA community stood behind the 39-year-old Velasquez through the hashtag #FreeCain. Fellow heavyweight Chris Daukaus, however, took a slightly different approach.
In a recent interview with Sherdog, Daukaus shared his perspective on the case, as a fighter, a father, and former law enforcement officer. The number nine-ranked UFC contender was a member of the Philadelphia police force from 2010 to 2021.
“As a father and as a fighter, I’m OK with what he did. Yes, it sucks that he shot the wrong person. I understand where he’s coming from. I understand the emotions that he must’ve felt, and I couldn’t imagine what was going through his head, and I couldn’t imagine being in that situation.
“As a former law enforcement officer, as a former police officer, dealing with the circumstances of the case and the facts of the case, I knew he was gonna be locked up. He is going to be charged, it’s just whether or not what he gets charged with during the trial,” Daukaus explained.
“It’s a really bad situation, I think, but we’ll see how it plays out. As far as the timeline goes, if he knew about things if he didn’t know about things if it was a ‘crime of passion’ with his emotions and if he just reacted, that plays a factor. As opposed to him planning a revenge factor against this person, that also plays a factor.
“As a father, as a father of a young son, and soon-to-be daughter, I can respect what he did. I understand what he did,” he reiterated. “But as a former law enforcement officer, like I said, he broke the law. He needs to be locked up.”
Daukaus says he understands why Velasquez took matters into his own hands.
“I guess that goes to show the type of faith or lack of faith that an individual has in the criminal justice system here in America. Which, as you can tell from not only this story but from other stories, it seems to be broken at this point in time,” he said.
“I really wish that it was fixed, but there seems to be something really wrong if the guy who did that to Cain Velasquez is now free to go out in society and back to his normal life after what he’s done, allegedly, what he’s done to someone or other people.
“Cain Velasquez did attack this person and tried to kill them and he should be behind bars. But, there’s a morality there, and that question or that topic needs to be handled better.”
Velasquez was denied bail as the judge deemed his alleged actions to be a form of “extreme recklessness to human life.” He is now facing multiple charges including attempted murder, which could land him a 15-year prison sentence.
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